NEIGHBORHOOD COOPERATIVES. AN APPROACH TO COLLABORATIVE MANAGEMENT IN REHABILITATION AND CONSERVATION OF NEIGHBORHOODS

Abstract

The economic and administrative model of cooperative housing -established for the creation of housing developments with advantageous conditions for their future
owners- has been adopted as a successful model in numerous countries. However, most of cooperative promotions are extinguished once the goal of obtaining housing
has been achieved, so that the potential of the collaborative model is not extended in time beyond this milestone.
The cohousing experiences mean an important step in the concept of cooperative activity, extending it to the functioning of the groups that inhabit them. Thus, the
inhabitants of a cohousing community may provide benefits such as obtaining services with advantageous prices and conditions, and the provision of recreational areas with
low acquisition and maintenance costs. In other words, the cohousing model attempts to transfer the collaborative aspects of the cooperative model onto the neighbors’
activity, introducing a lifestyle able to exploit the potential of group versus individual.
There are many historical references of these ideas, from the proposals of utopian socialism (Fourier, Godin) to well-known Le Corbusier’s Unités d'Habitation, but
perhaps the novelty of contemporary experiences of cohousing is the fact that these are initiatives bottom-up, where the starting point is the community. Therefore, one of
the determining factors for the success of cohousing is the existence of strong social cohesion of the collective and a sense of belonging to the group. This causes often
tend to think that cohousing is linked to certain ideological sectors, but the reality is that this is a model that transcends these topics and has proven to be a very suitable
alternative for certain social groups..