Masters of Degrowth Week 7.1: Seminar 2 on Housing and Convivial Technology . Small is necessary

These Technologies Help You Live Lightly on a Fragile Planet

Problems of current "green tech and growth"

•  Replacing fossil-fuel-powered cars with fleets of electric vehicles requires vast amounts of new materials.  All of which involve controversial extractive practices that damage ecosystems and people.
• The clean-tech pathway threatens to exaggerate the exploitation of our planet and fails to account for the uneven burdens felt by the poor and vulnerable
• Carbon offsets allow the wealthy to pollute at the expense of the poor

With this context we explore the concept of convivial technology and applications.

Convivial Technology

Tools and production techniques that are easily understood, created, and repaired and that assist people to fulfill their basic needs. In practice, convivial technology is used in transport, food growing, self-provisioned housing, and much more—all grounded in cooperative, mutually agreeable and sharing approaches that together comprise a convivial society.

• We can walk, ride bikes, use cargo bikes and take public transportation 
• We can transform parking lots into permaculture gardens
• We can plant productive trees throughout cities to diminish heat and to provide wood, fruits and nuts—all maintained by local communities

The bicycle, which is easy to build, use and repair—and is ecologically frugal—is a great example of a convivial tool. Cyclonomia helps members use its workshop to repair their own bikes. The Cyclonomia team also designs, builds and hires out bike trailers and cargo bikes to carry people and shopping and to be used as a substitute for delivery trucks.

Vegetables grown at Zsámboki Biokert and neighboring partner farms are ferried to collection points in Budapest by a third self-organized Cargonomia venture called Kantaa, a bike messenger and delivery service.

In convivial approaches, food consumers typically produce at least some of their food. Zsámboki Biokert offers members opportunities to work flexibly. This small farm follows principles of regenerative agriculture and permaculture, benefiting the local environment and offering greater resilience against global warming.

Such farming practices, which rely on convivial tools—horses rather than tractors, for example—are especially important for improving resilience and production in food-growing areas. Recent rises in food prices, whether from COVID or from the war in Ukraine, have prompted a renewed interest in local food sources.

In urban and rural areas, degrowth housing involves building simply designed, modest dwellings with low ecological impacts by reusing local, at-hand materials while benefiting from collective work parties. Precincts of such residents develop off-grid water, sanitation and energy services.

Degrowth activists campaign to refurbish and expand social housing, instead of demolishing existing structures. Similarly, degrowth advocates for more affordable, sustainable and varied housing options, such as small homes and shared, collaborative housing.

In all these kinds of ways, convivial technology helps communities achieve zero-carbon or even negative-carbon living—in contrast to clean technology, which ultimately means using more to create more. In short, degrowth and convivial technology work hand in hand to minimize extractive activities and overproduction, reducing carbon emissions at the source.

From Sharing a House to Eco-cohousing

Joint households can be insecure, frustrating and lonely experiences, putting up with unkept rules and irritating habits.

 A solution to that is ‘intentional community’, a transparent and responsible approach aims to shield householders from arbitrariness, impermanence and neurotic behaviour.

These co-owning cases were not driven by environmental rationale but by their affordability, and various reasons associated with sociality and support.

 One of the strongest reasons Mary gave for compact collective living was resisting pressures for economic growth built in by mortgage debts.

Commercial construction sectors tend to divide into firms focusing on a building type, such as detached buildings in suburban estates or medium-rise apartment blocks. Supply dictates demand. Legal and financial structures conform to commercial practices.

Small multi-household developments are ‘under-catered' despite demographic changes in cities that make such developments sensible and in demand.

Reviews of Sydney and the Australian state of New South Wales more generally suggest that approvals for multi-dwelling sites are more likely in suburbs than the inner city.

Simple subdivision producing two titles has led to perverse outcomes: inflating house prices and inappropriate, profit-driven, developments that do not deliver savings for either the environment, home buyers or tenants.

 Demonstration projects of environmental sustainability act as a way of life, rather than simply technologies and techniques that can be purchased and retrofitted to mainstream capitalist society. 

Aprovecho, near Cottage Grove (Oregon), is a residential community which runs a non-profit sustainability educational organisation from a 16-hectare property bought in 1981 and owned as a land trust. In 2016, they taught courses such as organic gardening and permaculture, appropriate technology (simple efficient technologies for home or farming work), ecoforestry, watershed restoration, bee-keeping, ecological stewardship, food preserving, natural building and green design

Settled in contemporary, often urban, environments where residents live very much like other citizens in private dwellings, except that they share use of and responsibilities for additional collective facilities, many cohousing models do not overtly challenge capitalism

Cohousing models tend to simply ameliorate the social alienation, gendered roles, economic inequities and affordability crises of contemporary society.

Certainly cohousing is an expression of mainstream ‘sustainability citizenship’, with discussions of sustainability within cohousing discourse centring on conventional light green triple-bottom-line approaches rather than dark green environmental or red solidarity criteria.

Durrett list six key distinguishing characteristics of cohousing: 

• participatory planning and design within a residential management model; 
• building and site design for residential interaction; 
• private dwellings alongside common shared facilities; 
• resident management of social and physical aspects of shared resources; 
• non-hierarchical residential management; 
• non-income sharing, residents pay fees and dues to a homeowner association (following a condominium arrangement)

If governments are to address the environmental, social and economic unsustainability of growing numbers of single-occupancy dwellings and the challenge of caring for seniors, then models such as cohousing offer numerous advantages. It is clear why policymakers, politicians and planners are now attracted to the model for its capacity to advance such state welfare concerns.

Many cohousing projects cost more because they are more complex and time-consuming, and deliver more benefits than living in separate dwellings. Moreover, in as much as costs derive from their niche market status, costs would fall if cohousing was in greater demand and supply.

Based on residents’ self-reported before-and-after practices, Meltzer’s study suggested energy efficiency was enhanced broadly by 5–6 per cent and water conservation by an average 9 per cent yet, significantly, showed variable results between communities. 

Perhaps the most interesting finding in Meltzer’s analysis was indications of a substantial growth in environmental practices related to air polluting toxic materials, general waste, and water and energy conservation after four years’ residence compared with the first year of residency. This strongly suggests development of more environmentally friendly and efficient practices from conscious and unconscious collective behaviour change.

Needless to say, no government agency or not-for-profit organisation can make cohousing a success. The driving force remains residents. Bresson and Denèfle emphasise ‘three core concepts: sharing, environmental awareness and citizen participation

 Cohousing can be created relatively easily within current planning, financial and residential structures and need have no higher level of environmental characteristics than building and planning codes require. This is not to understate the massive effort and frustrations of pioneering residents in achieving certain cohousing developments. However, cohousing is collaborative living within private property and market norms, with residents relying on their own incomes and able to purchase and sell relatively easily out of this housing form through the real estate market.

In a politico-sustainability context, cohousing as a generic concept and practice might be described as ‘shallow’ or ‘light green’ and ecovillages ‘deep green’. The sustainability of Earth has been a central concern for ecovillagers who have often experimented with breaking down private property and income barriers to achieve equality and communality.