Collaborative Housing in Europe: Conceptualizing the Field

Since the 2000s many European countries have seen the re-emergence of a range of collective self-organized and participatory forms of housing provision. These include resident-led cooperatives, cohousing, Community Land Trusts (CLTs), and different types of community self-help and self-build housing initiatives. While the idea of collective self-organization in housing has a long tradition, this recent wave of housing initiatives features new aspects, and aims to address pressing issues in today’s society. The latter include, amongst others, concerns for wider social inclusion and cohesion as well as affordability and higher environmental sustainability standards. In this Special Issue (SI), we refer to these types of housing practices in terms of “collaborative housing”.