The culture of living closer together

Contributor: Manuel Lutz

Manuel Lutz is a scholar with degrees in spatial planning and political geography based in Berlin and Potsdam. Interested in both policy analysis and community, his research traces the top-down and bottom-up changes in housing, from homeless tent cities to innovative forms of collaborative housing.

Blueprint City

Living Labs for Housing: Co-operatives Reinvented

Housing co-operatives can produce high-quality housing at affordable rents. Previously, Manuel Lutz introduced us to three contemporary housing co-operatives in Germany and Switzerland and their decision-making processes, based on solidarity and ‘self help’. Scrutinizing these projects further, today he looks at the finance that makes it possible to scale up. Mixed financing: equity capital and […]

Blueprint City

Lived Solidarity: Housing Co-operatives

Housing co-operatives offer a way to pursue quality of life at an affordable price: even the United Nations considers them a necessary approach to address global housing challenges. But what is a housing co-operative? Manuel Lutz tells us how co-operatives came to exist in the German-speaking Europe, how they operate in contemporary world, and what lessons they can offer us.