Metropolitics

The Uruguayan Housing Cooperatives: The Miracle of the “Commons” | Las cooperativas de vivienda uruguayas. El milagro de los “comunes”

Benjamín Nahoum — 2025-04-08T05:00:00Z

Benjamín Nahoum presents the case of the Uruguayan cooperative movement that started in the 1960s. Through the years, the movement has shifted—as have other South American housing movements—but the principles of mutual aid and self-management have remained clear, and it has become one of the primary housing tenures in Uruguay.
---- Series: Horizons in the Housing Struggle ▼ Pulse aquí para leer en español ▼
Fifteen years ago, the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences, which annually awards the

- From the Field / Uruguay, South America, Latin America, Global South, housing, affordable housing, cooperative housing, commons, alternative housing, cooperation

Snowbirds' Gift Economy in the Arizona Desert

David Frati — 2017-11-07T06:00:00Z

Each year, 200,000 retired people spend the winter in and around the small town of Quartzsite, Arizona, in the Sonoran desert. Some 50,000 of them live in informal housing: campers, tents, cars and trucks, and self-constructed cabins. In the field with the most economically marginal of these “desert snowbirds,” David Frati observes the complex gift economy that structures their social lives.
Every winter, retired snowbirds reach the small town of Quartzsite, Arizona, one of the few places in

- From the Field / camps, care, housing, alternative housing, United States, ethnography, sociabilities, poverty, assistance, informal housing, Arizona, money, resourcefulness, desert, gift economy, nomadism, retirement, snowbirds, concern for others, neighborliness

Self-managed housing at the Maison du Val

Alain His & Olivier Ratouis & translated by Oliver Waine — 2012-12-12T17:54:38Z

Alain His, co-founder of the Maison du Val in Meudon, near Paris, talks to us about this self‑managed housing complex created at the end of the 1970s, the philosophy it espouses, what sets it apart from other forms of housing, and how community life there has evolved over the last three decades.
---- Series: Mutual Housing The Maison du Val, an apartment complex founded on the principles of self-managed housing, opened in Meudon (in the south-western suburbs of Paris) in 1980. It was

- Interviews / Paris region, housing, alternative housing, self-managed housing, group housing, Greater Paris, video, Featured

Participation and housing policies: a century-old phenomenon

Marie-Hélène Bacqué & Claire Carriou & translated by Oliver Waine — 2012-10-24T04:55:00Z

The recent renewed interest in participatory housing experiments is, in fact, linked to a much longer history that can be traced back to the late 19th century, when the first public policies in France to encourage the construction of low-cost housing were introduced. Metropolitics looks at how this multifaceted history has laid the foundations for today's projects.
---- Dossier: Mutual Housing In France, since the late 1980s and the last realisations in a set of participatory housing

- Debates / participation, housing, alternative housing, cooperative housing, self-build, experimentation

(Re-)Inventing self-build housing in Strasbourg

Anne Debarre & Hélène Steinmetz & translated by Oliver Waine — 2012-10-17T04:45:00Z

In the world of alternative housing, Strasbourg is an important player. Here, Anne Debarre and Hélène Steinmetz describe the stimulating process that has given rise to a growing number of self-build housing developments in and around the city.
---- Series: Mutual Housing Among the nebulous body of alternative housing projects that have emerged since 2000, the initiatives in Strasbourg stand out from the crowd for a number of reasons. In a context where a growing array of vocabulary is used to

- From the Field / participation, housing, alternative housing, Strasbourg, self-build, eco-neighborhood

The Vertical Village: the long road travelled by a Lyon housing cooperative

Marie-Pierre Marchand & translated by Oliver Waine — 2012-10-10T04:55:00Z

The “Village Vertical” development that has taken shape in a mixed-development zone in Villeurbanne, near Lyon, is today one of the most prominent experiments in the alternative housing sector. Here, Marie-Pierre Marchand – who has monitored the development's progress as part of a research project – describes how this cooperative came into being, along with the values that it embodies.
---- Series: Mutual Housing Following significant media coverage, the Village Vertical (in English,

- From the Field / construction, participation, housing, sustainable development, alternative housing, Lyon, cooperative housing, Villeurbanne, verticality

Aging in self-managed housing

Stéphanie Vermeersch & translated by Claudio Cambon — 2011-03-02T08:33:31Z

What happens to old people when they find themselves in a state of dependence? As an alternative to retirement homes, self-managed housing consists of organizations set up mostly by women who have created spaces where people can age well by taking care of themselves and others.
---- Series: Mutual Housing If the employment of seniors holds the attention of politicians and the media today, the issues surrounding aging will weigh on public authorities all the more so tomorrow. Housing for

- From the Field / care, aging, alternative housing