Living Together: Exploring the Economy of Shared Resources in Melbourne’s Collective Housing

<p dir="ltr">Since the early 2010s, collective housing has increased in Melbourne’s middle-ring suburbs. Instead of focusing on dwellings as purely speculative financial tools these models aim to offer alternative strategies, based on an attitude towards sharing. In comparison to speculative counterparts, they are seen as a means to provide more achievable purchase/rental costs, improved environmental performance and construction quality, collaborative design decision-making, and to encourage community interaction. </p><p dir="ltr">This study identifies the integral notion of sharing in collective housing as an ‘economy of shared resources’ and aims to understand how this occurs in projects. The shared resources encompass three main areas: land, social capital and amenities. They typically occur at a range of scales: from the acquisition of land, to communal amenities such as laundries or flexible rooms, as well as social networks fostered between residents and neighbourhoods. </p><p dir="ltr">To examine these aspects of collective housing in the middle-ring, eight selected case studies at varied scales were explored, including market-led counterparts. The research adopted mixed methods of qualitative, quantitative and creative practice research. Together, this approach provided the means to understand resident lived experiences and to analyse the impact of similar and differing housing design strategies. </p><p dir="ltr">Emerging analyses began to reveal eight key design themes of collective housing. Meanwhile, data of lived experience began to describe how these homes were conceived and lived in and – of particular interest – how shared elements were adapted or used in unexpected ways. Collectively, the findings aimed to establish original recommendations for collective housing in Melbourne, and to speculate on their cumulative effects at an individual, neighbourhood, suburb and civic levels.</p>