Abitare collettivo come nucleo di cittadinanza. Nuove relazioni e nuovo agire professionale

Current environmental conditions impose sustainability as a primary need. Its satisfaction must balance the principles of environmental protection with those of technological innovation, economic efficiency, social equity and inclusion. In the housing field, opposed to institutional top down orientations and choices, are now emerging bottom up practices that demonstrate a surprising richness of results even in a limited dimensional consistency. The growing phenomenon of cohousing points out a sense of quality of living that cannot be found in the ordinary housing. Within this static scenario, the inhabitant only notionally "can" pick his own "nest". Ways of saying that express different relations to the house but also an imposed individualistic and solipsistic concept of living space, synonymous of "standardized wants" due to a stereotyped planning, even if characterized by high technicality. In this obvious reality, there is an element that substantiates on a quality level an "other" housing demand: the social-cultural factor of inhabitants, aware messenger of individual and collective needs. This factor becomes an instrument of feasible connection between affordability and social advantage in the research of mutual benefits, being aware that intentional living, technological solutions and techniques produce positive effects on the environment and on the family budget. Cohousing well represents Social Living, where the collective dimension is a collective action, definition on which also Social Housing should be based on. Also intended as instrument to rebuild social, economic and environmental aims for an urban regeneration, restoration and wise use of resources, able to produce future. The cohousing is investigated as a paradigmatic act of liberation from "commonplace" of the project and the bearer of the demand for new skills in planning. The inhabitant is the key player in planning and, as such a key player, he addresses to professionals that can demolish a standard project and that are capable of proposing type-morphological and techno-typological solutions based on a needs/performance elation, on the assurance of the result in time and cost transparency. Therefore, there is an inversion of the ordinary conduct of the actors involved in the building process: not houses for a virtual resident but living space for real inhabitants, where flexibility, maintainability, durability, management handiness and cost saving acquire an innovation dimension.