“The commodification of housing and urban land has turned what should be a basic
human right into an instrument of speculative profit-making, systematically excluding the poor and reinforcing class divides within cities.” 1
What remains when housing is no longer considered a need or a right but a commodity? This question frames the urgency of rethinking how we conceive and produce space today. The idea that the home is a private, apolitical realm has long been dismantled by scholars such as Christopher Reed, who, in ‘Not at Home: The Suppression of Domesticity in Modern Art and Architecture‘, frames domesticity as a contested cultural and political field.2 From this perspective, the contemporary housing crisis is not merely a failure of supply and demand mechanisms, but the manifestation of deep structural inequalities, demanding a fundamental
redefinition of what it means to inhabit collectively.
This panel examines how cooperative practices and participatory models challenge dominant paradigms by proposing new forms of collective living that emphasize agency, mutual support, and care as central to spatial production. John Turner’s influential argument in Housing by People — that when inhabitants control key decisions, housing becomes a source of individual and social well-being — remains highly relevant.3 Already in Freedom to Build (1972), Turner had introduced the idea of “housing as a verb,” stressing that housing should be understood not as a finished object, but as an active, ongoing process shaped by its users.4 Contemporary
cooperative models adopt this perspective, framing housing as a living, adaptive system rather than a static commodity.
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