For one hundred years, housing cooperatives in various sizes and shapes have been a positive part of the urban landscape of Washington, D.C. Co-ops first arose in the city in the 1920s. Building slowed during the Great Depression, but their numbers expanded after World War II. Conversions expanded their numbers, and the model thrived and became a vital part of the city's fabric. Local historian Steve McKevitt tells the stories of the architecture and development of each District co-op with both historic and modern images.

Since the global financial crisis of 2008, which was triggered by a real estate crisis, there is a renewed search for alternative forms of housing production that escape speculative interests and are based instead on models of co-ownership, co-production and co-management. Against this backdrop the concept of the cooperative has experienced a true renaissance in recent years. Housing the Co-op shows how cooperative housing construction and forms of self-determined building production offer effective solutions to the global housing crisis. The manifesto and accompanying essays with case studies from Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas make a claim that by combining micro-political actions and co-operative practices we can move closer to a systemic change for a more sustainable and equitable future. A glossary of cooperative housing explains important terms.

Building Communities: The Co-Operative Way, first published in 1988, sets the flourishing of housing co-operatives throughout the 1980s in a theoretical and historical framework that suggests that tenant control is the best way out of the still-problematic issue of housing policy. Before the First World War, co-operative housing was poised to become a potent force in government policy, but instead municipal housing rose to prominence. However, alongside a growing crisis of confidence in state housing and a continued decline in the private rented sector, a new political consensus has emerged that has placed co-ops firmly at the top of the agenda. Setting out the argument for collective dweller-control of housing, Birchall demonstrates that the arguments for co-operatives are strong, based on a broad spectrum of political thought. He charts the early and recent history of co-operative housing, and shows how they provide a flexible and stable means of meeting housing needs.

<p>This book investigates co-housing as an alternative housing form in relation to sustainable urban development. </p><br /><p>Co-housing is often lauded as a more sustainable way of living. The primary aim of this book is to critically explore co-housing in the context of wider social, economic, political and environmental developments. This volume fills a gap in the literature by contextualising co-housing and related housing forms. With focus on Denmark, Sweden, Hamburg and Barcelona, the book presents general analyses of co-housing in these contexts and provides specific discussions of co-housing in relation to local government, urban activism, family life, spatial logics and socio-ecology.</p><br /><p></p><br /><p>This book will be of interest to students and researchers in a broad range of social-scientific fields concerned with housing, urban development and sustainability, as well as to planners, decision-makers and activists. </p>

工人新村，是20世纪50—90年代为国有企业职工集中建造的住宅区，是社会主义城市的重要组成，也是今天上海最具特色的社区类型和城市景观之一。工人新村的产生、发展、停滞、衰败与更新，深深地嵌入上海1949年以来的空间发展和社会变革之中。工人新村不仅是一种居住形态，也是一项住房政策、一段社会历史和一种生活方式。
本书作者于2008—2010年对上海第一个工人新村——曹杨新村，以及其中的居民——劳动模范、先进工作者、上山下乡的知识青年、国企改革中的下岗工人、社会变革中的外来务工者等进行近距离的观察与记录，通过对新村空间规划原则、两代新村工人社会身份建构、居住流动现象的分析以及对新村改造与保护的讨论，揭示工人新村从“模范社区”到“纪念地”转型背后独特的历史价值与社会意义。