Collaborative Housing Research (1990–2017): A Systematic Review and Thematic Analysis of the Field

ABSTRACT

Europe is witnessing a new wave of collective self-organized forms of housing provision. We refer to the wide variety of these forms under the umbrella term “Collaborative Housing”. Alongside growing grassroots activity, the number and breadth of academic publications is rapidly growing. Nevertheless, the field remains thematically fragmented, with literature spread across disciplines. This article aims to establish a basis for greater conceptual clarity by exploring the domain of collaborative housing research over the period of 1990–2017. We carry out a thematic mapping and assessment covering 195 relevant peer-reviewed journal articles in English, German and French. These are inductively synthesized and categorized into five main thematic areas: socio-demographic, collaboration, motivation, effects and context. We conclude that the systematic and inductive approach of our review unravels new perspectives and makes the case for the conceptualization of collaborative housing as an independent research field, providing a basis for further theory development.

KEYWORDS:

• Collaborative housing
• literature review
• conceptualization
• ontological categorization
• collective self-organized housing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

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Additional information

Funding

Richard Lang’s contribution was supported by an APART-fellowship of the Austrian Academy of Sciences [Project number 11696], and by a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship (IEF) [Project number 622728].