Rural and peri-urban cohousing and social inclusion

In a groundbreaking approach to urban housing, Melbourne families have successfully transformed a single-family home into three townhouses through collaborative efforts, creating sustainable and community-focused living spaces. The Davison Collaborative in Brunswick and Northcote Townhouses in Northcote represent innovative housing models where friends and neighbours pooled resources, expertise, and finances to redevelop single dwellings into multiple family homes. The Davison project, completed in 2020, replaced a single brick veneer house with three architecturally designed three-bedroom homes, tripling the lot's density while maintaining the streetscape's character. The Northcote Townhouses project, developed by a group of friends with professional backgrounds in architecture and design, involved purchasing a 638 sq metre property and working closely with local residents and council to ensure community integration. Both projects required significant planning, with the process from forming the group to moving in taking approximately four years. The families involved emphasized the importance of maintaining privacy while fostering community connections, with residents reporting a balance between social interaction and personal space. The projects have received recognition, with the Davison Collaborative being a finalist for the Victorian Premier's Design Awards and Northcote Townhouses receiving a commendation in the Houses Awards. Property development consultant Tim Riley notes that while these projects require substantial professional expertise and financial resources, they offer a viable alternative for those seeking more meaningful social connections and community-oriented living. The initiatives demonstrate that increasing urban density does not require high-rise construction but can be achieved through more efficient use of existing residential spaces, potentially transforming thousands of single-family homes into multi-unit dwellings across Melbourne. The projects highlight a growing trend in collaborative housing models that prioritize community, sustainability, and intergenerational living.

NETCO empowers European cities to co-create inclusive, affordable and community-led housing solutions. A network of cities for collaborative housing.

L’Université de Lyon et l’association urbaMonde France ont organisé le 6 juin 2024 une conférence sur l’habitat participatif en temps de pandémie dans le cadre du projet de recherche CO-HOPE. Chercheurs, professionnels, représentants de mouvements habitants et résidents d’habitats participatifs se sont retrouvés à l’Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) de Lyon pour ce temps d’échange avec des membres autrichiens, espagnols, suédois et français du consortium CO-HOPE. On 6 June 2024, the University of Lyon and urbaMonde France organised a conference on collaborative housing in the pandemic times, as part of the CO-HOPE research project. Researchers, professionals and representatives of collaborative housing movements as well as residents gathered at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) in Lyon for this discussion with Austrian, Spanish, Swedish and French members of the CO-HOPE consortium. Direction artistique et réalisation : Adrien Cadene (boomerang-effect.fr). Production : Université de Lyon. Scenario et sous-titres : urbaMonde-France. _________________________________________ Plus d'actualités sur l'habitat participatif ici: https://www.urbamonde.org/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/urbamonde https://www.facebook.com/urbaMonde/ https://www.instagram.com/urba.monde/ https://twitter.com/urbaMonde _________________________________________