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Cultivating Collaborative Lifestyles in Urban Neighbourhoods

Despite the increase of urban populations resulting in people living in close proximity to each other, society continues to operate with a focus on individual desire and hyper-consumption, at the expense of the earth’s ecologies and all that encompasses it. How can we begin to cultivate an alternative consumption model that not only focuses on the conservation of ecologies but also begins to break away from ways in which “habits, routines, social norms and cultural values lock us into unsustainable behaviours”? (Botsman, R., Rogers, R. 2010). Collaboration, through its many forms, be it ‘commons’ or modern-day ‘sharing economy’, continues to be a topic of discussion as a favourable solution to environmental, social and economic issues. This paper and design project explores the everyday practice of collaboration and its potential for activating a network in urban neighbourhoods, specifically in high-density housing. The project explores: how we can share, where we can share, and what we can share, using the sharing of household items as a seed for sustainable development. The resulting project presents methods and guidelines for cultivating collaboration in the form of a multipurpose toolkit. The toolkit “Collaboration is Cultivation” enables individuals to become activists and implement collaborative practices in their own neighbourhood. Through designerly research and a design project I shed light on the potential of the coming-together of neighbors through collaborative lifestyles that can incrementally transform neighborhoods into one’s that are socially and environmentally, sustainable, resilient and thriving.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:lnu-75295
Date January 2018
CreatorsRatzinger, Sofia
PublisherLinnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för design (DE)
Source SetsDiVA Archive at Upsalla University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeStudent thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text
Formatapplication/pdf
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

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