ABSTRACT
Co-housing has been framed as an answer to demands on reducing the ecological impact from the built environment and on modern ecological friendly lifestyles, with a growing group of socially and environmentally conscious residents pursuing alternative housing solutions. Yet claims of sustainability in co-housing must also be understood in relation to a prevalent ‘ecological modernisation’ logic in contemporary urban governance. This chapter explores whether co-housing can be seen as part of a more fundamental transition to a sustainable society within planetary boundaries, or whether it rather might serve as an example of incremental, yet insufficient change within current systems. Utilising the analytical framework of ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ sustainability, and the dichotomy between collective action and individual responsibilisation, the chapter discusses in what way co-housing can be understood as a sustainable way of living. While co-housing could be dismissed as merely offering a slightly ‘greener’ middle-class lifestyle choice, it might also pose a more radical socio-ecological alternative, based in principles of anti-consumerist, collaborative, and low-impact everyday practices, where the meso-level of collective action of the co-housing community might be an important arena for pursuing far-reaching sustainability transitions.
