Background

Modern capitalist societies have consumption at the core of their social and economic activities. This is one of the underlying problems that sustainability is facing. In need of solutions and avenues for limiting our footprint and consumption, we turn towards alternative solutions such as coliving as a potential for facilitating sustainable lifestyles in their residents.

Objectives

The overall purpose of this thesis is to investigate coliving impacts on the sustainability practices of residents within the Swedish urban environment. To do this effectively, the theoretical framework of this thesis will primarily utilize practice theory, as well as institutional theory and clan control theory to a secondary degree, to explore their interactions between coliving social structures and residential agents in terms of following sustainable activities and compare those with a single living household. Through conducting interviews with the residents of the Coliving and single living in line with these frameworks, this thesis aims to explore to a greater degree how the coliving housing model can contribute to more sustainable lifestyles.

Methods

A qualitative research strategy was chosen for the study with a two-case comparative study design. To further explore the complexity of the interactions between agents and properties of social structures, data collection methods were utilized, such as semi-structured interviews with residents of coliving and single-living. The analytical approach was conducted through a thematic data analysis method.

Results

The Coliving initiative stimulates sustainable lifestyles by creating a set of social structures and cultural rules that promotes interaction, diversity, and sustainable lifestyles. The design of the Coliving initiative activated the most evident and impactful change mechanisms. Specifically, the built environment that is diverse and flexible and facilitates variations of facilities and immense recourses accessible for the residents to interact and use for different moods and behaviors. The recruitment process facilitates a foundation of balance between diversity and like-minded individuals for learning potentials and collaboration. The governance structure of the community-based organization is nonhierarchical participatory, and consensus-based, and the community is self-organized. These features have shown to promote collaboration and interaction between individuals and stimulate sustainable practices. Last, the cultural rules of the community also promote interactions and collaboration, as well as many of the social sustainability principles and anti-consumption practices.

Conclusions

The coliving, compared to the single-living, has much more quantitive, qualitative, and diverse set of structures with sustainable properties that brings the residents more or less into the situation where a greening of their corresponding lifestyles becomes a very convenient option.