TY - JOUR
T1 - Between the democratization of housing and the neoliberal responsibilization of citizens
T2 - The proliferation of co-housing in Viennese city planning
AU - Butzlaff, Felix
AU - Bärnthaler, Alina
AU - Bleiker, Leonie
AU - Deflorian, Michael
AU - Mock, Mirijam
AU - Stoisser, Luise
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2024.
PY - 2024/7/30
Y1 - 2024/7/30
N2 - In contemporary city planning, self-organized collaborative forms of housing are flourishing. However, in the literature, the increasing incorporation of citizens in housing and planning has been interpreted in very different ways. The research on urban planning has understood the proliferation of co-housing groups as indicating changing participatory demands of citizens on one hand, and as an effort to organize social change on an everyday level on the other. In contrast, critical social researchers have interpreted the rise of collaborative housing not as a democratization, but as a shift of urban governance towards the responsibilization of citizens. In this article, we use these two theoretical perspectives for making sense of the political values that are present in the contemporary proliferation of co-housing groups in Viennese urban planning. The empirical base of our endeavor is a series of qualitative interviews with different stakeholders (city planners, administrators, architects, developers, and neighbors) and members of co-housing groups in the city development area Wildgarten in the South of the city. We conclude that in the Wildgarten, the self-empowerment of citizens goes hand-in-hand with an increasing top-down steering by a neoliberal entrepreneurial city. Furthermore, we found that the co-housing groups tend to willingly accept the hierarchy between planning bodies and themselves, which contradicts the political marketing strategies of social transformation and democratization attached to Wildgarten. Simultaneously, possibly as a consequence from top-down citizen responsibilization, our findings show that co-housing groups often focus more on a democratized group interior than on transforming society at large.
AB - In contemporary city planning, self-organized collaborative forms of housing are flourishing. However, in the literature, the increasing incorporation of citizens in housing and planning has been interpreted in very different ways. The research on urban planning has understood the proliferation of co-housing groups as indicating changing participatory demands of citizens on one hand, and as an effort to organize social change on an everyday level on the other. In contrast, critical social researchers have interpreted the rise of collaborative housing not as a democratization, but as a shift of urban governance towards the responsibilization of citizens. In this article, we use these two theoretical perspectives for making sense of the political values that are present in the contemporary proliferation of co-housing groups in Viennese urban planning. The empirical base of our endeavor is a series of qualitative interviews with different stakeholders (city planners, administrators, architects, developers, and neighbors) and members of co-housing groups in the city development area Wildgarten in the South of the city. We conclude that in the Wildgarten, the self-empowerment of citizens goes hand-in-hand with an increasing top-down steering by a neoliberal entrepreneurial city. Furthermore, we found that the co-housing groups tend to willingly accept the hierarchy between planning bodies and themselves, which contradicts the political marketing strategies of social transformation and democratization attached to Wildgarten. Simultaneously, possibly as a consequence from top-down citizen responsibilization, our findings show that co-housing groups often focus more on a democratized group interior than on transforming society at large.
KW - Co-housing
KW - collaborative housing
KW - democratization
KW - participation
KW - urban planning
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85200055349&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/09697764241265053
DO - 10.1177/09697764241265053
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85200055349
SN - 0969-7764
JO - European Urban and Regional Studies
JF - European Urban and Regional Studies
ER -