Sharing living spaces: towards alternative forms of ownership – ALTER-PROP

ALTER-PROP
Sharing living spaces: towards alternative forms of ownership

Housing and how it is lived in will be used as a way of approaching the complex issue of the right of ownership, which was recognized as a basic human right in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizens of 26th August 1789 and which has recently been thrown into question. This change of concept of home ownership, from individual to shared living spaces, will be examined from the perspective of cooperatives.
Housing is one of the main concerns of the general public, and thus of public policies. Up to the end of the 20th century, we can consider that economic development gave almost everyone access to housing, varying in form from country to country. But the western socio-economic model collapsed at the beginning of the 21st century, and it is highly symbolic and significant that the global awareness of these profound social changes arose from a property crisis which started in the USA.
We probably need to go back to the social protests of 1968 and the community hopes of the 1970s to find the origins of the environmental and solidarity movements which currently drive the alternative approaches to social organization in response to this crisis.
ALTER-PROP will examine the emergence of these new ways of living, community practices, demands for sustainability, and questioning of the dogma of constant growth, looking at them from both a social and a legal perspective, notably civil and urbanism law. It will examine new forms of shared rather than individual home ownership; the archetype of this shared ownership is the cooperative, which takes a wide range of forms. We will study its possible consequences and how these converge or clash with relative policies, in France, Europe and beyond.
In Europe and elsewhere (notably North and South America, and North Africa), legislation is less restrictive than in France, and there have been many experiences, within a very wide range of contexts linked to the specific history of the country. From these examples and their variety has emerged the idea that a comparative study could be fruitful, with a view to moving towards an on-going community law.
Cooperative ownership constitutes a central issue around which cross-cutting questions can be raised at multiple levels, centered on three topics: 1) daily living arrangements (changes in concepts of intimacy, in what is personal, family organization, the sharing of household activities); 2) the relationships between private and public spaces, and between uses and responsibilities, raising questions about a third sector in the relationships between institutions and individuals; 3) innovations: a) in the law (French or Community laws on ownership and urbanism); b) in architectural possibilities, concerning both housing design and research into materials and other features ensuring building sustainability and management; and c) social innovation through the implementation of a particularly active form of participatory citizenship.
The aim of ALTER-PROP is to bring together relevant cases, to analyze difficulties, and to mobilize knowledge in order to offer creative solutions at the institutional level, and also to be a source of reference for all those initiating these new and innovative projects.