**3.3 Promoting Commoning practices**

The third domain, coping with decentralization and relocation strategies, refers to commons and commoning. Commons can be defined as arrangements of co-production, co-consumption and co-utilization of goods, services, land and, not least, housing. They rearrange access to all these 'things' through collective structures of participation in political decision-making processes at the local scale [33]. The idea of commons also includes alternative forms of cohabitation by promoting the sharing of devices, offering rooms for common use or the co-caring for children and older people.

Thanks to an increased awareness of the far-reaching adverse effects of neoliberal capitalism, commons received a renaissance over the last two or so decades. Their aspirations are committed to all domains of the sustainability and socio-ecological transformation discourses since commons do not only strive for intermingling individual wellbeing with collective wellbeing, which tightens relationships among residents. Anarchistic-inspired commons also take ecological concerns seriously into account, as they explicitly attempt to reduce resource and energy consumption by substituting market-individualistic with community-individualistic strategies of housing and mobility patterns. Furthermore, those commons establish plans and programs that combine private with collective property, promote sharing economy models and prioritize public transportation offers.

A recently published "micro-political manifesto" [34] to housing cooperatives proposes several political activities to approach a revised understanding of housing as a core part of social infrastructure. Among other things, the manifesto sticks up for


In order to realize a transformation toward commoning practices in the fields of housing and neighborhood relations, different tactics need to be applied, considering local circumstances explicitly. In the context of a cooperative housing project in Sao Paolo, Brazil, Ventura [35] stresses a strong interlinkage between local (neighborhood) and global (the city) housing policies – "that micro-political organization can only unfold its full potential if it also gains macro-political relevance" to oppose to prevailing neoliberal capitalism of housing economy. Similarly, Woldeyessus [36] focuses on strategies that bridge "representational collectives" (government) and "collective representations" (governance), i.e. strategies that mutually interlink local parliaments of elected delegates with collectives representing civil society movements.

Another example that promotes affordable non-profit housing and a transformation from property to belonging is the German Mietshäuser Syndikat [37]. The legal organization rests upon the rule to prioritize the "utility value" against its "capital value". This rule is achieved by a "model of divided ownership: every housing project is owned by a limited liability company (Haus GmbH), which – in turn – is owned by two shareholders, the Hausverein (Dwellers' Association) and the Mietshäuser Syndikat. […] While the structure of the limited liability company allows the Hausverein to be self-sufficient in all questions concerning the use and management of the house, the Mietshäuser Syndikat has the mandate to safeguard the ownership status of a building and to prevent the property from privatization" ([37], p. 136). Another model for financing collective housing property is micro-funding, which has been applied more often to the so-called Global South [38].

The outlined commoning approaches inspired us to reflect on potential translations into the Austrian context. Any attempts to decentralize future housing and neighborhood policies would increase their success if micro-political activities were interrelated with macro-political framing programs. These programs would pave the way for a growing diversity – in number and nature – of housing forms to oppose the highly standardized housing architecture, following the idea of a mono-functional use of rooms and praising the two-generational family as a role model.

Explorable references in a European context are, for example, the pioneering housing and neighborhood design activities in Zurich, Switzerland (Kraftwerk, Kalkbreite, Mehr als Wohnen) [39]. Intellectually grounded on libertarian communalism and outlined in programmatic writings such as Bookchin [40] and P.M. [41], their practical transformations reveal versatile ideas and imaginations about alternative ways of cohabitation. "This utopian attempt articulated for the first time the idea of agency through design, shattering the existing urban order and replacing its conventional typologies with a free-flowing, autonomous entity in collective ownership" ([39], p. 182).

To mitigate poverty and reduce social inequality, increased diversity of housing architectures, allowing for multi-functional uses, is needed. This need is also reflected in a changing composition of households, with an increased number of single-person and single-parent as well as multi-person homes beyond the kinship model. Moreover, new migration and mobility patterns require novel approaches to diversified housing supplies, ranging from tiny mobile homes and temporary housing communities to fully-furnished apartments offered by local communities or municipalities. Unfortunately, the housing market supply has not yet sufficiently anticipated

*Contemporary Challenges and Future Strategies to Mitigate Social Inequality in Urban Housing… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.107999*

these new demand patterns. However, the first experiments of social co-housing with privately and collectively used rooms, car-free neighborhoods and collectively shared goods and services exist in Austria [42]. A prominent example is given with the habiTAT [43]. An overview of alternative, participatory housing models can be found in [44, 45] for Austria, and [46] for Switzerland.

The idea of communitarian housing can be extended to the co-utilization of goods and services needed in a neighborhood community. Bikes and cars, tools, garden devices, books, kitchens and many more things are worth being included as part of a local sharing economy. Furthermore, the re-invention of subsistence framing as an innovative economic approach in the food sector to provide households within a regional range would also be part of the commoning vision. Formally situated between small-scale urban gardening and commercial urban farming, subsistence farming increases neighborhood food autonomy and decreases transportation efforts effectively and sustainably. While urban gardening is very popular in European cities [47], subsistence farming is still in its infancy. Further models of subsistence could be used in the energy sector. The production of local solar, water or wind power likewise contributes to enhancing independence from national or global energy production – a fact whose significance will rise in the future due to climate change policy efforts and the revealed severe dependency on energy resources from the Russian government and other authoritarian states.

One recently realized example of a communitarian housing project is "Cooperative Housing Volkersdorf" near Graz [48]. This project offers 28 apartments for 63 people to date. Several of the characteristics highlighted above have been realized in Volkersdorf, such as a partial subsistence economy in food production, renewable energy production, use of ecological resources in housing construction and coworking opportunities nearby.

The success of community-driven housing can be enhanced if intermediary nodes between local communities and urban housing representatives are introduced. Those nodes – commonly referred to as neighborhood managers – serve as bridging relations between the macro- and micro-levels in urban politics on the one hand and relations among residents of the cooperative(s) on the other. This relational capacity can be defined as "performed urbanism", which differs from patterns of "self-organized urbanism" (the idealistic form of solving conflicts) and "instrumentalized urbanism" (exploiting urban amenities with no or little personal contribution) [49].

Models of performed urbanism have been established in newly created larger housing complexes in, for example, Salzburg, for some years. They complement other social services at the city district level. Neighborhood management is organized jointly by the city administration and social associations, like the Diakoniewerk [50]. The neighborhood managers provide services to satisfy the residents' heterogeneous needs and contribute to moderating controversy. Also, public rooms can be used for different events that bring residents closer together. This approach of vertically and horizontally intermediary collaboration can serve as a role model for self-organized housing cooperatives in one way or the other.
