This paper addresses the emerging methodological debate about citizen social science from the perspective of participatory research methods. The paper introduces the research forum as a horizontal and safe communicative space moderated by academic researchers that enables co-researcher participation across all phases of co-creational research projects. It is argued that in co-creational citizen social science, such a communicative space requires conceptualisation in order for it to foster citizens’ engagement in the knowledge production that deals with their specific social lifeworlds. In the research forum, the potential that the social sciences bring to citizen science—methodological reflection and the theoretical interpretation and contextualisation of data—can flourish in a collaborative process. Based on the expertise in co-created research in multigenerational co-housing projects, the paper reflects on practical experiences with the research forum in terms of four central dimensions: (1) opening up spaces for social encounters; (2) establishing communicative practice; (3) initiating a process of social self-understanding; (4) engaging in (counter-)public discourses. Finally, the paper closes with a summary of potential and challenges that the research forum provides as a methodological foundation for co-creation in citizen social science projects.

Städtische Proteste haben Hochkonjunktur. Mieter_innen, Kunst- und Kulturschaffende, Studierende, Wohnungslose und Geflüchtete melden sich zu Wort und fordern jenseits ihrer partikularen Bedürfnisse direkte Teilhabe an politischen Entscheidungen ein. Am Beispiel der Metropolen Berlin und New York zeigt David Scheller, wie sich städtische soziale Bewegungen zwischen 2011 und 2015 konstituieren und damit dringliche Themenfelder politisieren und verbinden. Ausgehend von einer hegemonietheoretischen Diskursanalyse der vielstimmigen Protestartikulationen schlägt er eine Interpretation von Möglichkeitsräumen zur Demokratisierung in der Postdemokratie vor, die für diese neue Phase städtischen Protests ausschlaggebend sind.

This chapter presents an analysis of six co-housing projects in Gothenburg and Hamburg, and how they are affected by support from, interaction with and regulation by, political institutions. It examines how municipal governments support co-housing groups as part of their official sustainability agenda, and to what extent co-housing projects address or meet the different goals that are part of this agenda. Ideologically, the strategies also place heavy emphasis on sustainability in policy documents and declarations, focusing on all three pillars of sustainability, but rarely recognizing tensions or contradictions between them. The chapter provides an analysis of the sustainability strategies of Gothenburg and Hamburg in relation to policies that address or affect co-housing projects. Both Gothenburg and Hamburg are examples of how, in the context of the housing shortage that exists in many European cities, municipal support for co-housing often takes the form of support for self-build groups.

This chapter looks at the interrelations and dynamics between urban activism and the politics of co-housing. Drawing on empirical material from Hamburg and Barcelona, it explores the socio-political context of co-housing in the interplay of bottom-up organizing and top-down governance. With particular attention to squatting and related questions of post-autonomous urban activism, this investigation is structured according to three issues: relations to the state; horizontal organizing; and direct actions. This includes questions around the legalization of squatted houses, and intersections with broader movements. On this basis, the chapter discusses what is termed the dialectics of the politics of co-housing. This dynamic relation between grassroots organizing and top-down governance intersects in different political aspirations for co-housing – and eventually in what is understood as sustainable urban development. On the one hand, squatting and urban activism follow a political logic of empowerment, self-management, mutual self-help and solidarity. On the other hand, local city governments impose a political logic of urban governance, often with the aim of regulation, control, marketization and co-optation. This dialectic plays out differently in Hamburg and Barcelona, but the underlying contradictory political logics remain similar.