Village living in city possible through co-housing initiative
MELBOURNE: Co-housing initiatives are reintroducing village living into the core of major cities around the world.
The proverb says “it takes a village to raise a child” and one group of Wellingtonians are taking this to heart by first building the village.
Hannah and Thomas Schickedanz are members of the Wellington co-housing group The Urban Habitat Collective who hope to transform a Mount Cook sheet metal working site into an “urban village”.
After forming about 18 months ago the development has moved quickly – the group secured their site in April, it has grown from eight to about 16 households, finalised its legal structure, are testing the site’s soil and are now deep into designing the complex ahead of applying for consent, which they hope to do in mid 2020.
Preliminary designs of the group’s seven-floor, 22 unit apartment block – a first for New Zealand co-housing projects – provides for private dwellings with all the usual amenities but built around shared spaces including a common kitchen and dining area, a rooftop conservatory, gardens and workshop.
The prospect of a city-based community convinced the couple to depart from the suburban nuclear family dream and to become founding members of the collective with a view to living their lives and raising their boys Otis,9, and Elliott,6, among a building full of honorary uncles, aunties, cousins and grandparents.
Co-housing sees people pool their resources to design and build clusters of dwellings based around shared spaces, community and neighbourly support. Sustainability is often a key principle.
An accepted concept in some parts of Europe, co-housing is uncommon in New Zealand. The county’s first co-housing development was the Earthsong Eco-Neighbourhood in West Auckland, established in the 1990s.
A number of co-housing developments are now under way such as the High Street project in Dunedin and Cohaus in Auckland. Other projects are being organised around the country.
While the notion of neighbourly co-operation might be “old fashioned” Hannah said their children would grow up around a group of people with a wide range of life experiences, skills and knowledge which she hoped would make her boys well-rounded.
Co-housing would also overcome the anonymity that could come with urbanisation and suburbanisation, Thomas said.
Housing in New Zealand could be isolating. “It’s that pioneering mentality of having your own plot.”
Hannah said the apartment complex would be designed to allow people to overlap and “bump into each other”. For the likes of parents who were short on time and older people seeking companionship it would not be hard to find someone to have a coffee with.
Massey University sociocultural anthropologist associate professor Sita Venkateswar said incorporating “village living” into an urban context was an interesting concept and the appeal of having the best of both worlds was understandable.
“When you live in a village, you have access to your family, extended family and wider community. If there is strife or you need help, things are not hidden – people can intervene and there is likely to be dialogue. In urban areas problems and isolation can be hidden with little recourse.”
Where village communities could be insular, urbanites tended to “be more worldly,” she said.
Urban design lecturer and head of the University of Otago School of Geography professor Michelle Thompson-Fawcett said including community-focused infrastructure was not a new concept and had, in part, been a reaction to the perceived disconnect created by rapid urbanisation and suburbanisation.
She said urban areas, particularly in Australasia and North America, were built around the “commuter lifestyle”.
Land zoning placed recreation, work, shopping and housing in different areas and constant moving between these places meant neighbours were less likely to cross paths.
The Urban Habitat Collective was still recruiting and were particularly looking for young families.
Thomas said while they were still in the designing stage, they believed the project would cost about the same as apartment bocks of a similar scale.
Social entrepreneur in residence at Massey University, Thomas Nash, believed co-housing would grow in popularity. New Zealand cities were fast running out of space and the development of more medium density co-housing projects was a way of building more efficiently.
With increasing awareness around mental health and elderly isolation he also thought co-housing would appeal to a range of people concerned about being alone.
The concept was also not so foreign for Māori with concepts like papa kāinga, or communal land, already established.
He said a barrier to co-housing was financial institutions who were likely to view such ventures as high-risk. This could be overcome with local or central government intervention, he said.
Simon Pigou, partner at Gault Mitchell Law with an expertise in property matters, said co-housing was an exciting proposition but like any property purchase the benefits needed to be weighed against the risks.
There could be challenges in creating a suitable legal structure that would protect and balance the interests of individual members. Apportioning expenses such as insurance premiums, ongoing maintenance and management costs, and the creation of rules would also need to be determined.
“There are some key matters that will need to be considered at the start-up and development phase, including the structure of a member’s financial contribution, funding arrangements and the security being provided to the collective’s financier, design and consent issues, and the mechanism for dispute resolution between members.”
While the Urban Planning Collective’s master plans are still afoot Hannah Schickedanz is looking forward to completing the building and moving in.
“I can just imagine the kids roaming around in packs and then putting them to bed, and everyone meeting up in one of the shared spaces.”
