Communist housing

I attended the Argyle Street Coop's housing conference today - and it was really exciting. Lots to think about, learn and simply get confused by.

The conference had essentially come out of discussions in Argyle St. (which is 25 years old this year) about possibly building a new housing coop from scratch somewhere in Cambridge. Which is bloody ambitious but also extremely inspiring, and the more I think about it the more inspiring it becomes.

We heard how others have done it in Redditch, Brighton and Hove (actually) and Manchester. We also heard from architects, our local MP, David Howarth, and people from other forms of co-housing on how to make new buildings that are environmentally sound, nice to live in and cheap (as these things go).

There were lots of debates throughout the day - far too much to go into in one post - so I'll focus on the thing that really got my spine tingling. Designing your own community. The Redditch people designed the homes they were going to live in themselves, and its difficult to think of a better way of really owning and controlling your environment.

To live in a community without landlords, where you decide, collectively, your own rents, policies, new directions and plans is a demonstration in actual fact of the way that we can live without profit and improve our standard of living at the same time. We don't even have to wait for a revolution to be able to make this small part of our lives our own.

The (faint) possibility of helping to design and build the very place I may live is... well, it appeals to me, and has got me thinking about what a perfect building would look like.

For me I want fresh light, and lots of it. Community spaces, where you naturally meet and hang out with your neighbours. I want buildings with beautiful curves not straight line boxes, placed in the town - part of the wider community. In short somewhere that fosters living together as a community.

It's not like I want something that looks like its made out of twigs and humous just to appear ethical. I want something that looks modern with space, trees and above all with people that I know and I don't want to see any landlords cluttering up the place.

Some people may be surprised at this knowing my naturally misanthropic and solitary inclinations. Well so am I frankly - but whilst I don't want to live in a commune I really do want to live in a community - and that sense of alientation and atomisation that pervades the estates just doesn't cut the mustard for me.

So, whilst I'm thinking about what makes a community, I'd like to ask you to sink yourself down into the warm bath of your imagination, listen to the water ripple and splash against the sides, smell the decadent aroma of candles and close your eyes for a moment to see the perfect home, it's people and how you'd live there.