Forms of collaborative housing and social cohesion in Brussels
(2017) ENHR 2017 Conference « Affordable Housing for All ! » — Location: Tirana (4.September.2017)
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- Abstract
- Brussels faces a growing housing challenge. Figures show for the present situation a quantitative gap between the produced housing supply (around 3800 units per year since 2003) and the housing demand linked to the increasing number of private households on the territory (around 5000 units per year between 2001 and 2015). Moreover, demographic forecasts stress the future crucial importance of this housing challenge by predicting a 12.5% increase in the population of Brussels by 2030. This means that Brussels will need approximately 40 000 additional housing units by 2030. In addition to this, Brussels faces a polarization between poor, middle and prosperous areas, which has increased in recent years. To meet this double challenge – housing and socio-spatial segregation –, urban planning supports since The 1990s production of housing mainly in the poorer and denser central areas of Brussels (where population growth is highest) but for “middle income”. Our communication will deal with the development in Brussels of different forms of collaborative housing (e.g. cohousing projects created by real estate developers or led by citizen communities) that emerged in this specific context. Our research question is: if and how different forms of collaborative housing contribute locally to social cohesion? Relying on a qualitative methodology based on field studies and interviews with inhabitants and promoters we will mainly focus on two aspects of this problem. Firstly, we will highlight the relevant aspects to differentiate those forms of collaborative housing and their contribution to social cohesion: e.g. the means of access to housing (legal framework), the process of making housing (actors involved, sources of funding), the target population, the materiality (spatial and architectural aspects) and the location (central/outlying and the characteristics of the neighborhood). Secondly, we will consider the ways those different collaborative housing projects integrate the neighborhood in which they are located. We will question the level of opening of those housing units from both a social and a material point of view and see and how these forms of housing can create or not opportunities for the inhabitants for new relations with their neighborhood and neighbors. By doing so, we aim to specify the collaborative notion, adding aspects that are less known in the literature (Tummers, 2016), as participation to the development of residential environment.
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Citations
Lenel, E., & Demonty, F. (2017). Forms of collaborative housing and social cohesion in Brussels. ENHR 2017 Conference « Affordable Housing for All ! », Tirana. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/258916