Urban Nomads. Infrastructure For The Detached

Abstract

This Urban Design Thesis Project aims to disclose how the interaction between the housing market, the emerging sharing economy, and more knowledge-based, mobile, and flexible work arrangements spatialises in new urban infrastructure such as co-living spaces.

It is embedded in a wider debate that addresses concepts of knowledge-based, mobile, and flexible work (cf. Castells 2010, Arendt 1998, Dell 2014), the emerging sharing economy (cf. John 2017, Botsman; Rogers 2011), living somewhere (cf. Bühring; Kniess 2016b; Häußermann; Siebel 2000), co-housing and co-living (cf. LaFond; Honeck; Suckow 2012, Droste 2015), and urban infrastructure (cf. Amin 2014, Graham 2001, Easterling 2010).

After discussing empirical as well as academic debates of the London housing market (cf. GLA 2017, Watt; Minton 2016), this thesis project argues how co-living has emerged in response to named dynamics. Unlike co-housing schemes, which usually are of a non-profit and solidary character, co-living is an externally managed shared living scheme aiming for profit. The Collective Old Oak, a co-living space located in North West London, which is unique in organisation and size, serves as this project’s case study. To research into co-living a six-week participant observation (cf. Spradley 1980) at The Collective Old Oak was conducted. In addition, narrative interviews (cf. Hopf 2007) with residents and staff members were held.

The co-living experience at The Collective Old Oak is a complex interplay of social processes, practices, and built environment. In opposition to marketing by The Collective Old Oak, which suggests their co-living scheme to be a home to its residents, this thesis project argues that it establishes a new kind of urban infrastructure instead that is set in between a home, a hotel, and a student accommodation but for adults and is commodifying a communal way of living.

To give evidence for this hypothesis, this thesis project develops a co-living pattern language. Inspired by Christopher Alexander et al.’s Pattern Language (cf. 1977) and drawing on Grounded Theory Methodology (cf. Strauss; Corbin 1996) and Actor-Network-Theory (cf. Latour 2005) it uses the idea of patterns as a tool and method for analysing social processes, practices, and built environment of co-living. 74 patterns disclose spatial qualities, practices, actors, and discourses of co-living at The Collective Old Oak. To allow readers to immerse in the co-living experience, additional residents’ portraits and thick descriptions (cf. Geertz 1973) of certain events and discourses enrich the pattern language.

This Urban Design Thesis Project closes by discussing how the developed co-living patterns differ from more traditional ways of living in apartments or houses and how co-living spaces such as The Collective Old Oak introduce new, commodified, and exclusive urban infrastructure to cities, but still can be seen as spaces of possibilities for the testing of new forms of living.