Revitalizing housing: the vital trajectories of cooperative systems

Abstract

In a present time of crisis. Disruptive, turbulent and problematic (Haraway 2022), cooperative housing have re-emerged as a resilient network. These dynamic systems came to challenge prevailing narratives about housing and city production, offering alternatives through an innovative social technology. These cooperative systems become authentic collaborative and supportive cells of habitat generation, thus forming a complex assemblage of multiple entities.

This essay invites to think about the vital and cyclical nature of housing cooperatives, by observing the phenomenon as an open system capable of establishing complex relationships that transcend the built object, towards giving value to the role of self-management and self construction played by the community.

The Mutual Aid Housing Cooperatives developed in Uruguay since 1968 is an example of comprehensive and sustainable solutions to the country’s housing needs. Supported by the National Housing Law of 1968, these cooperatives have established an alternative system that integrates environmental relationships and strengthens cross-sector collaboration between the community and the State.

The concept of vitality in cooperativism, which this essay addresses, aligns with the organic and biological approaches to perception and world-building proposed by authors such as John Turner, Donella Meadows and Donna Haraway.

The present article consolidates the importance of collective ownership in these cooperatives as both a mechanism of safeguard against real estate speculation and a symbol of popular resistance. Furthermore, it underlines the relevance of community practices and active participation in the construction and management of housing as essential pillars for sustaining the vitality construction of the system.

Own Author. 2023. UFAMA Cooperative under construction. Cooperatives of Afro-descendant women heads of households