MOVICOMA Session

Program

Talk: “Alternative production of collaborative housing: senior cohousing in London” by Melissa Fernández Arrigoitia (Lancaster University)

Collaborative housing has become popular throughout many European countries. Its format, content and terminology varies depending on an array of social, economic, cultural and political elements (contemporary and historical). My presentation will focus on the English “senior cohousing” version. Although this sector is still emerging and marginal within the traditional housing market, its development offers valuable insights into creating alternative social, economic and material models. Taking a broader perspective, I will identify the factors that have boosted or hampered its development in London—a city whose so-called “housing crisis” has been in the political and popular limelight in recent years, overlapping with intensifying discussions on the needs of an ageing society. I will use two case studies—Featherstone Cohousing and the Older Women’s Cohousing Group (OWCH)—to delve deeper into how collaborative processes have interplayed with established and professional urban housing planning structures, including residential architecture, and how they have created various social, economic and political infrastructures to address the needs of their members. Lastly, based on OWCH results, I will discuss how personal and collective stories have weaved together during a long period of collaboration to create a different fabric of life, home and old age.

Melissa Fernández Arrigoitia is a Lecturer in Urban Futures at Lancaster University. Her interdisciplinary work focuses mainly on matters of critical and feminist geographies of the home, and housing in general. Her research interests are geared toward contemporary forms of urban belonging and exclusion. She has conducted research projects on public housing destruction and resettlements in Latin America and the Caribbean, migrant construction workers in the context of urbanisation in South Asia and the creation of collaborative housing practices, especially cohousing, in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, the United States and France. Her most recent titles include Geographies of Forced Evictions: Dispossession, Violence, Resistance (Palgrave, 2017) and Social Housing in Europe (Wiley, 2015).