The Politics, Ecology and Economics of Co-Housing from a Gendered Perspective

AAction Lecture Series 2021-2022 : Who’s counting?

'If the Environment Were a Bank, It Would Have Already Been Bailed Out'* Bernie Sanders

Financial models, economic plans and insurance allows accelerated processes and the political geometry of extraction and movement to operate to the detriment of the planet. Yet economic collapse correlates with the ongoing transformation processes as a result of climate change. If we are to negotiate and take planetary action, we must understand that we are suspended within economic structures that both fund and risk manage on behalf of individuals and corporations. We need a shift in perspective. How do we alter technological systems toward a more planetary condition? Can we estrange insurance from its colonial pathways? How do we re-value technology? How do our choices and involvement bail out the planet?

In this talk we will discuss the ways in which climate justice intersects with feminism through a focus on co-housing. What is eco-feminism - and feminism in general - and in what ways does it relate to architecture? Understanding the complex intertwinement of the two will be the starting point of exploring co-housing as a possible model for eco-feminist practice in architecture, addressing the role architects can play in creating low-impact and gender-equal housing. We are suspended within gendered social and political structures that both fund and risk manage on behalf of individuals and corporations. We need a shift in perspective. Who makes choices in a patriarchal world of intersectional inequality? What are gendered consequences of the omnipresent dream of property and, if so, how can we unlearn?

Helen Jarvis is Professor of Social Geography Engagement at Newcastle University: she gained her PhD from the London School of Economics in 1997. Her current research considers intentional communities of collaborative housing, civic engagement, geographies of inequality from a household perspective and work-life reconciliation. She is internationally regarded for advancing new paradigms of sustainable de-growth and social architectures that support a green sharing economy. Visiting fellowships include a period as ‘researcher in residence’ in the ‘freetown’ of Christiania, Copenhagen, in 2010. She sat on the board of directors of the UK Cohousing Network 2014-2018 and remains a core participant of Tyne and Wear Citizens (a branch of Citizens UK).