Planning for sufficiency shared housing: Toward an agenda for future research and practice

In this critical commentary we propose a research agenda that supports the scaled development of “sufficiency shared housing,” or housing options built for the sharing of functional space in a way that lowers total resource consumption. While research from multiple contexts shows that shared housing options are generally popular, they remain niche market options, at best. Drawing from the specific cases of co-housing and co-living in North America and Europe, we argue that shared housing options will remain inaccessible, exploitative, and/or vulnerable to rebound effects without more structured guidance from the public sector in the form of planning, design guidelines, and revised building standards. We thus conclude by outlining a research agenda that supports proactive and positive guidance from the public sector by 1) testing and dispelling myths about shared housing being morally aberrant or unpopular, 2) offering specific design guidance, 3) testing and validating shared housing as a low-impact “sufficiency” option, and 4) scanning the emerging policy landscape.