Communal eco-housing and households offer degrowth strategies and prefigure necessary change. Living in collective housing means sharing goods and services, eco-efficiencies and politico-cultural experience of commons forms of governance.

Scholars active in eco-collective housing (squats, housing commons and co-living) in various European, Oceanic and USA sites talk about: creating sustainable housing and small residential biophysical ecofootprints, and experiencing transformations towards degrowth.

Challenged by narrow building and planning regulators, capitalist cultures, and financial and legal structures focusing on private property and family residences, housing collectivists: engage in the micro-politics of managing residential commons; grow communal domestic cultures necessary for achieving smaller eco-footprints; demonstrate new ways of living and engage in macro-political outreach actions.

On many political and socio-material fronts, communal eco-housing structures can act as hybrids pointing to sustainable degrowth futures. Significant works-in-progress, they can show how the personal is the political in creating feasible and desirable degrowth.

This interactive 2-hour session has four 15-min talks and audio-visual material. Contributors will question participants on housing experiences and ideas. With participants' permission we plan to record the session.

This media entry was a contribution to the special session „Housing for Degrowth“ at the 5th International Degrowth Conference in Budapest in 2016.