Resource overview
This resource is the research paper “Enabling and embedding circularity goals in housing cooperatives”, published in Resources, Conservation & Recycling Advances by Wim Van Opstal (VITO, Belgium), Nancy Bocken (Maastricht University, the Netherlands) and Jan Brusselaers (VU Amsterdam, the Netherlands). It examines how cooperative housing governance can enable circular economy strategies in the built environment, drawing on 23 semi-structured interviews with housing professionals, cooperative representatives, service providers, finance providers and policymakers.
Why circular housing matters
The paper frames circular housing as a priority because the built environment accounts for over 40% of total waste by volume and represents the largest share of global resource consumption. It situates the topic in EU policy, noting that the European Commission’s Circular Economy Action Plan identifies the building sector as a key area for circular interventions. The authors also connect circular housing to social goals, referencing affordable housing as a recognised hotspot within Sustainable Development Goal 11.1.
What the study investigates
The study focuses on whether housing cooperatives—collectively owned and democratically governed organisations—have institutional advantages for implementing circular strategies. The authors define circular strategies broadly, covering design-related approaches (e.g., design for disassembly and modularity), circular business models such as product-service systems (where assets like kitchens, façades or heating systems are provided as services), and sharing models for spaces and equipment. The research is structured around four questions: how cooperative governance influences circular strategies; how this differs across housing types; how cooperatives align stakeholder incentives; and what their comparative institutional advantages and limitations are versus conventional actors.
Governance advantages and constraints
Interview findings indicate that cooperatives can mitigate market failures and split incentives through collective ownership, long-term planning and participatory governance. These features can support lifecycle-based investments, bundled procurement and shared infrastructure, and can help embed sustainability standards from the outset. At the same time, cooperatives face constraints including complex and slower decision-making, limited access to finance, and regulatory barriers. The paper also highlights classic cooperative challenges such as “horizon” and free-rider problems, as well as risks related to scaling and maintaining cooperative identity.
Differences across housing types
The paper compares single-family houses, apartment buildings and cohousing. For single-family settings, diseconomies of scale and higher autonomy can reduce feasibility of shared infrastructure and increase moral hazard. Apartment buildings can benefit from economies of scale that make shared infrastructure and service models more viable, but governance complexity grows with more residents and mixed-ownership contexts. Cohousing is presented as the closest structural match for circularity because it is inherently organised around shared resources and intentional community practices, though regulatory barriers (e.g., around energy sharing) can still limit implementation.
Stakeholders and policy implications
The authors describe how cooperatives can reduce barriers for residents by bundling demand and enabling education and trust-based governance, while also creating a potential early-adopter market for service providers. Financial institutions, however, may perceive cooperatives as higher risk due to unfamiliar ownership structures and difficulties valuing shared or service-based assets. Policy implications include adapting fiscal incentives (e.g., renovation VAT rates and subsidies) to include cooperative and access-based models, clarifying legal recognition of cooperatives, enabling energy-sharing regulation, and supporting inter-cooperative collaboration to build economies of scale and knowledge transfer.