The commons. A new approach to collective housing

Abstract

This work is focused on the interest in the emerging philosophical-political paradigm of the common as a response to the systemic crises that we experienced during the last decades in relation to multiple spheres such as the environmental, economic, social, and political ones, especially in the big cities.
In response to these challenges which have been emphasized by the global health crisis of COVID-19, the main hypothesis is that the common can allow us to rethink collective housing from a new perspective that breaks down the binary and hierarchical logic through which we understand space. It is argued that the collective housing project based on the common could give raise to the repoliticization of the domestic space and its adaptation to contemporary challenges. This leads to housing configurations enabling both a diversity of coexistence structures and a variety of quality shared situations and activities.
In this sense, the interest of this article lies mainly in being able to provide a new perspective on collective housing that serves to not only generate new questions but also contribute to design higher quality domestic spaces. The aim is to allow for a healthier daily life and the repoliticization of the domestic space in the proximity sphere. To achieve this end, research advances of La Ciudad Común laboratory are introduced; they are based on a methodology applied to thirty case studies in Buenos Aires and Rosario, Argentina, between 1880 and 2020.