This article reviews a decade of co-housing studies and publications, to identify major themes and research gaps. Generally, co-housing is seen as a promising model for urban development, and most empirical case studies report active and diverse communities, creating and maintaining affordable living environments. However, numbers are small and there is as yet no quantitative evidence to substantiate the claims. Nevertheless, important lessons can be drawn from cohousing as an integrated practice to meet today's societal and environmental challenges. Rather than its utopian ambitions, the frictions with current institutional frameworks point the way to transform these into more adequate agents of development.

The re-emergence of Co-housing matches with the current rise of 'DIY', 'Rurbanizing' and 'New Commons' trends in Western European countries. Publications and websites of co-housing networks show that the ambitions of the initiatives are very similar internationally, and there is a strong information flow between projects and crossing borders. There are often high expectations, both by inhabitants and urban policy makers about the resilience and impact of self-organized housing communities. At the same time, driving forces behind the trend are different for each country: from demographic change to land scarcity, promotion of private property, and failing housing distribution. Moreover, planning contexts vary considerably, both geographically and over time. This article searches for an interpretation of the co-housing trend through the lens of spatial planning. This article is based on collaborative research in France, Netherlands and Germany, including field experience in several other EU countries. This article argues that co-housing can only be fully understood when taking into account planning context. The relevance of self-organized housing for urban development and spatial planning lies primarily in the lessons it learns on 'participative urbanism'; both in design and management of high quality urban environment.

The pressures of climate change, energy transition, the financial crisis and retreating governments, call for a reintroduction of the subsurface into spatial planning. Most urban technological infrastructure, including load-bearing capacity, heat and water, is located in the subsurface. It stores water, plays a role in cooling the city and provides geothermal heat as renewable energy. Yet the subsurface is insufficiently recognised as part of the solution in tackling the current challenges. This paper compares the level of integration of subsurface management in Dutch, Swedish and Flemish (Belgium) planning systems. The criteria for the comparison of the planning systems are based on the format developed in COMMIN, a transnational project within the Baltic Sea Region INTERREG III programme. To establish the guiding principles for spatial planning applicable in all three countries, the principal institutions, legal frameworks and planning documents are studied. These are analysed and connected to subsurface management aspects. The analysis of the main differences and overlaps between the planning systems of the three countries forms the starting point for an approach that integrates subsurface decision making into spatial planning. The conclusions argue that, rather than new regulations, a culture change in planning culture is the key to successful integration of the subsurface.

Co-housing has re-emerged in European cities as a model of common dwelling that aims to be ecologically and socially sustainable. Although it is the subject of growing academic interest, there are significant gaps in knowledge and wishful thinking about its promise that is not substantiated by evidence. We examine co-housing from a feminist political ecology (FPE) perspective with the aim of contributing to research on co-housing, and commoning more generally, as alternative practices in affluent Global North cities. Drawing on extensive research on co-housing in Europe and our observations from joint visits to four co-housing projects in the Netherlands and the UK, we cast critical feminist light on sharing practices at the level of the collectivized household. In addition to identifying synergies and tensions between FPE and recent literature on the radical promise of commoning, we raise questions about the extent to which the seeds of transformative, post-capitalist and post-patriarchal change are being sown in actually existing co-housing projects. We conclude with questions toward an agenda for co-housing research that moves beyond wishful thinking.

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