Co-Housing Response to Social Isolation of COVID-19 Outbreak, with a Focus on Gender Implications

Emanuele Giorgi, Lucía Martín López, Ruben Garnica-Monroy, Aleksandra Krstikj, Carlos Cobreros and Miguel A. Montoya
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Emanuele Giorgi: Tecnologico de Monterrey, Escuela de Arquitectura, Arte y Diseño, Campus Chihuahua, Chihuahua 31300, Mexico
Lucía Martín López: Tecnologico de Monterrey, Escuela de Arquitectura, Arte y Diseño, Campus Querétaro, Santiago de Querétaro 76130, Mexico
Ruben Garnica-Monroy: Tecnologico de Monterrey, Escuela de Arquitectura, Arte y Diseño, Campus Querétaro, Santiago de Querétaro 76130, Mexico
Aleksandra Krstikj: Tecnologico de Monterrey, Escuela de Arquitectura, Arte y Diseño, Campus Estado de Mexico, Cd López Mateos 52926, Mexico
Carlos Cobreros: Tecnologico de Monterrey, Escuela de Arquitectura, Arte y Diseño, Campus Querétaro, Santiago de Querétaro 76130, Mexico
Miguel A. Montoya: Tecnologico de Monterrey, Escuela de Arquitectura, Arte y Diseño, Campus Guadalajara, Guadalajara 45019, Mexico

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 13, 1-25

Abstract: COVID-19 forced billions of people to restructure their daily lives and social habits. Several research projects have focused on social impacts, approaching the phenomenon on the basis of different issues and scales. This work studies the changes in social relations within the well-defined urban-territorial elements of co-housing communities. The peculiarity of this research lies in the essence of these communities, which base their existence on the spirit of sharing spaces and activities. As social distancing represented the only effective way to control the outbreak, the research studied how the rules of social distancing impacted these communities. For this reason, a questionnaire was sent to 60 communities asking them to highlight the changes that the emergency imposed on the members in their daily life and in the organization of common activities and spaces. A total of 147 responses were received and some relevant design considerations emerged: (1) the importance of feeling part of a “safe” community, with members who were known and deemed reliable, when facing a health emergency; and (2) the importance of open spaces to carry out shared activities. Overall, living in co-housing communities was evaluated as an “extremely positive circumstance” despite the fact that the emergency worsened socialization.

Keywords: co-housing; social isolation; COVID-19; coronavirus; community; survey (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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