The contribution of cohousing to urban development: challenges and potentialities
The research proposal aims to understand and analyze the so-called collaborative communities or cohousing, seeking to answer the following research questions: Is cohousing as a proposal for collective production of housing a way for the “de-commodification” of housing? How do they materialize in concrete experiences? Based on a bibliographic review, the research will contextualize the emergence of cohousing in the housing context of the 70s, in Europe and Latin America, European case studies will be presented that point out possible ways to achieve social, economic and environmental sustainability and a framework of emerging Latin American experiences. The analysis axes are the community organization forms, the land structure and the access forms to communities and the urban and environmental proposals. Finally, intends to debate in what context and in what way such communities have been developed in the Brazilian reality, through interviews with people interested in living in cohousing, certified facilitators and architects, as well as professionals in the real estate sector, who express different views. The research is pertinent because this growing community model has been pointed out by several theorists as an alternative for sustainable development and a new housing development process. Some experiences are recognized as micro laboratories for innovative urban models of social interaction with “bottom-up” approaches. Therefore, it is expected to collaborate to expand the academic debate on cohousing, to provide relevant contributions to groups in training and to different professional segments, and to stimulate possible propositional actions in the housing field in search of social, economic and environmental sustainability.