Discussion: House-Building Cooperatives - a Model for the Future
Building cooperatives are becoming increasingly active in Germany cities. Hitherto, the housing market - especially that for owner-occupied flats - was dominated by developers. Private clients mainly built single-family houses. Now, however, blocks of dwellings created by cooperative groups are enjoying ever greater popularity. There are two main reasons for this. One is that the accommodation in most blocks of flats is standardized in size and type and is less and less able to meet individual needs; furthermore, developers are rarely willing to experiment. The members of a building cooperative, on the other hand, often have quite concrete housing concepts that are met neither by off-the-peg flats nor by a detached house. Schemes under-taken on a mutual basis allow individual wishes to be implemented (whether in the form of terraced houses or a block of flats), from the external planning and the layout of the dwelling to the choice of materials and internal fittings.
