This section aims to show how government agencies have engaged in various ways with community groups to support the realisation of col-laborative housing projects.
Germany
Privately owned dwellings and collective ownership of shared spaces characterise many baugemeinschaften (‘community building partnerships’ or ‘building communities’) in Germany and collective self-builds in the Netherlands. Some baugemeinschaften only operate collaboratively up until the build ends and have few common facilities.
Baugruppen are self-administering building groups of owner-occupiers, who collectively buy land and collaboratively design, and sometimes labour on, a multi-household build (baugruppe), the architect being pivotal and saving the usual profit-margin. Levels of sharing are determined by each group, including sharing gardens that are accessible to the neighbourhood. Hamiduddin and Gallent suggest that the level of collective self-build activity in Germany is associated with the compara-tively high proportion of small building firms and cooperative housing.
Moreover, ‘the power of speculative providers (especially over the land market) is curtained and group-build is given a chance to flourish’.20
Significantly, collaborative housing in Germany has been supported for decades by the federal German Development Bank (Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau, KfW) that not only finances collaborative housing ventures as a matter of course but also, in 2016, was offering hefty interest discounts of up to €75,000 per household for sustainability features.21 These types of schemes have been used to assist projects such as the Klima Solar Haus (2009) the original multi-household passive house in Berlin, where an environmentally friendly communal lifestyle meets high environmental construction and energy-use standards.22 There are other banks and foundations that support such ventures, such as Nürnberg’s green UmweltBank, so financial constraints are limited to eligibility criteria and amounts available for borrowing.
Berlin
Since 1975, around 1000 developments collectively demonstrate that Berlin is the most active collaborative housing urban node in the world. The Wohnungspolitische Selbsthilfe program alone seems to have accounted for up to one-third of these initiatives. As such, Droste has referred to Berlin as a ‘socio-spatial lab of urban development’, replete with different kinds of collaborations that include architects as drivers, proactive government policies, and self-building community groups as developers – all with significant heterogeneity.23
Berlin’s government has supported the Institute for Creative Sus-tainability (id22) (2002–), a not-for-profit organisation promoting
‘CoHousing’ cultures and post-growth initiatives such as community gardening, offering learning opportunities and an interactive website for promotion of projects, networking and sharing data.24 CoHousing is id22’s generic term for collaboratively designed and built housing spaces for multiple households that develop ‘self-managed social architectures’
to share activities and experiences, not just spaces and resources.25 Despite achievements in choice and access to collaborative housing models, the scramble for available land and support remains; generally municipal governments use ‘design-based competitive bidding’ and evidence of financial feasibility to decide sales of public land to citizen groups. Selfmade City presents various progressive collaborative housing and sustainable self-initiated projects in Berlin to identify key aspects as criteria for evaluating proposals to receive government support.
Such criteria are useful indicators of sound CoHousing characteristics:
neighbourhood and urban interaction; shared space, community and social foci; long-term affordability; open and green spaces; re-use and reactivation; hybrids; quality (re)densification; customised solutions for each generation; investment in ecological building; and future-oriented solutions and experimental models.26
Spreefeld, Berlin
The baugruppe cooperative housing model of Spreefeld (2011) on the River Spree in Berlin (Figure 7.1) has low- and middle-income resident-members who are, in effect, permanent tenants paying affordable staggered rent, say for 20 years, or until they leave and sell their share
(estimated at around 50 per cent equity). They were actively involved in some construction, which focused on simple, straightforward, multi-use interior design. Three apartment blocks with 64 cohousing dwellings (25–150sq m) accommodate around 140 inhabitants, who benefit from sustainable energy-saving features of a passive house standard, generate renewable energy, electric-car-share and enjoy private and community spaces, such as a children’s day-care centre; music, guest and carpentry rooms; and dozens of workspaces. At ground level, multi-functional rooms and outdoor spaces are accessible to the public. Communal living is an option in six cluster-apartments with 6–21 residents.27
Despite the success of Spreefeld, Michael LaFond – architect and Spreefeld resident, and director of id22 – has made a generic complaint that ‘local government is fairly slow, and not that creative’.28 Droste agrees that the skills, concerns and programs for encouraging collaborative housing at a municipal level in Germany are patchy, discon-tinuous and questionable, especially regarding effective and streamlined inter-departmental collaboration.29 In Berlin, the average dwelling price increased around 55 per cent between 2009 and 2015. Instead of simply selling public land off ‘to the highest bidder’, municipal readiness and Figure 7.1 Spreefeld: Three blocks of collaborative housing on the River Spree, Berlin
Source: Ute Zscharnt (Berlin), photographer
prioritisation of collaborative endeavours in land-use decision-making could support more affordable housing.30 However, as Tummers points out, engagement skills are not the planning profession’s strong suit and groups complain of bureaucratic red tape and patronising, rather than co-generative, approaches.31
Tübingen: Mühlenviertel
Governments have a unique capacity to lease or sell public land at reasonable rates for collaborative housing purposes, and their agencies can orchestrate multi-stakeholder partnerships and give projects a formality to reassure financiers. Droste identifies Hamburg and North-Rhine Westphalia, along with Berlin, as proactive state governments.
Moreover, Freiburg and Tübingen, both in Baden-Württemberg, have encouraged collective self-development for decades. Building on prior experience of encouraging innovative re-use in small-scale neighbour-hood complexes, in 2003 Tübingen authorities developed an urban planning agency responsible for the conversion of the Mill District, Mühlenviertel (2007–2010), pitched as a model for replication elsewhere.
Eliason points out that Tübingen housing had become prohibitively expensive by the mid-1990s, whereas the recent collaborative housing model achieved affordability and, despite taking longer, ‘a quality of sustainable urbanism very difficult to come by’ in mainstream develop-er-led processes. Tübingen’s supervisory agency demonstrated a range of skills, orchestrating multiple actors to fulfil numerous social and sustain-ability objectives.32
The planning agency held a competition among citizens to name the district, encouraging variety and mixed uses. The agency led and arranged multiple baugemeinschaften for 250 apartments in 25 clusters with shared community spaces. Future residents, including seniors, participated in designing their dwellings. Baugemeinschaften offer experiential opportunities for residents to build skills in community and neighbourhood-making. It is a reliable model: ‘banks gladly lend to them’. A set of ten zero-energy and ‘energy plus’ dwellings established by one baugemeinschaft surpassed a proposed 93 per cent coverage of primary energy needs to 103 per cent without high-tech or expensive options. Using wood construction materials, cellulose insulation and natural linoleum on floors, passive house dwellings were designed for energy efficiency using renewable wood, and geothermal and solar
photovoltaic energy sources. Homeowners saved on construction costs, which were a reasonable €2000–2800 per square metre.33
Vrijburcht, Amsterdam
The Dutch government has had a history of funding and renting large Centraal Wonen (cohousing developments) since the 1970s.
Many subdivide into clusters of 5–10 dwelling units, with substantial governance over membership and shared facilities, and access to larger spaces held in common for the whole development.34 Owning 80 per cent of land in its jurisdiction, the City of Amsterdam is a powerful landlord, typically leasing tracts from one to 50 years. This unusual level of control over land use prevents a highly speculative market arising.
Annual ground lease is paid but the leasehold is negotiable and can secure a mortgage, expanding opportunities for supporting collaborative living. For instance, in 2002, a site was leased for 50 years to a successful competing group proposing affordable housing with live-cum-work spaces. Designed in a participatory way with prospective residents, they worked with radical architect Hein de Haan (CASA Architects), who was already highly experienced in designing public and social housing.
Subsequently, Vrijburcht became a collective self-build model of pride to Amsterdam authorities because of its size (52 dwellings) and location in a diverse mixed neighbourhood that features other, if smaller, collabora-tive housing projects.35