COOPERATIVE URBANITY

Risks and opportunities of scaling-up self-managed housing policies. The case of Uruguay

Abstract

The Uruguayan cooperative housing movement, a pioneering global example, emerged in the late 1960s from grassroots efforts and gained rapid institutionalization through an innovative legal support.This experience has grown over the last fifty years to become the mainstream procedure for social housing provision in the country having a strong impact on the process of building Uruguayan cities. In this sense, it could be understood not only as a prolific architectural experience but also as a social movement involving new understandings of urban governance. However, contemporary challenges persist, particularly in adapting strategies to evolving urban environments. This article examines three key debates: cooperatives' limited autonomy in addressing socio-economic changes, the creation of mono-programmatic and socially homogeneous urban spaces, and the enclosed nature of cooperative developments. In this respect, the establishment of an institutional framework that can articulate different actors in order to include a variety of stakeholders by widening the current operation of existing organizations in the Uruguayan context, as well as finding more flexible legal frameworks for state support that doesn’t compromise the cooperative’s autonomy, are proposed as possible paths for further development of the model. This work grows for a master´s thesis dissertation.