Introduction
Claire Simonneau and Eric Denis divide “urban commons for housing” into the following three categories: i. measures taken for the collective production of habitat; ii. socio-legal processes for collective claims to land rights (commoning); iii. planning and real estate development projects on collectively owned land (Simonneau and Denis, 2021). The case study of this paper, the Mutual Aid Housing Cooperatives (Cooperativas de Viviendas por Ayuda Mutua – MAHCs) in Uruguay, falls under the third category since the ownership rights over the land and buildings (including houses and common spaces) belong to the cooperative rather than to the inhabitants.1
Notably, the basic principles of the MAHCs2 remain unchanged even after 50 years from their establishment: They have been offering an ever growing alternative form of housing to the market’s one for the economically disadvantaged and middle classes. Several factors contributed to its durability over time: (i) the support of public policies, (ii) a strong activist movement’s sustain and (iii) the reflection and innovation provided by continuing academic research on this subject in Uruguay. In the present paper, we delve into the “accompanied participation”3 paradigm, designed by the Technical Assistance Institutes (Institutos de Asistencia Técnica, hereafter referred to as IATs), to assess if it should be included too as one of the key factors of MAHCs’ endurance. This analysis draws on the literature covering technical actors and their intermediary role, between inhabitants and institutions in the build-up of community projects, and the literature analysing the evolution of participation practice in architectural and urban projects from a professional’s perspective. We debate about these two dimensions: the presence of intermediary stakeholders, and a participatory accompaniment in the creation and maintenance phase; to prove their contribution to the endurance of commons.
The IATs are a group of interdisciplinary professionals that instruct and guide the MAHCs development in all aspects (social, juridical, economical and architectural). They provide the commons with technical support using an approach that could be defined as an accompanying participation process. We attempt to establish whether this practice, involving the collective production and transmission of knowledge and savoir-faire from professionals to inhabitants, is conducive to develop the continuous involvement and empowerment of inhabitants.
They are institutionalised stakeholders recognised by an ad hoc legislation4 as an interface between MAHCs members (builders and ultimate beneficiaries of the projects) and the concerned public institutions: the Ministry of Housing and Spatial Planning, the National Housing Agency, the municipalities and their different services. We are interested in their role as to safeguard the commons’ independence from institutional influence while promoting its “institutionalisation” (to bring it into a legal framework) but preventing their appropriation by public authorities, to become a top-down institution-driven process.
After briefly presenting the MAHCs paradigm, we will analyse the working methods of IATs, demonstrating what we believe to be the effects of this practice on the preservation of these commons. Finally, we will discuss their role as intermediaries, to examine the relationships between commons and institutions.
Context: Technical teams conceived the Uruguayan mutual aid housing cooperatives (MAHCs)
1. A paradigm based on collective ownership and self-construction
Currently, Uruguay holds more than 600 mutual aid housing cooperatives (MAHCs), which are in different stages of development (in process, under construction, inhabited). The cooperatives are located mainly in urban and peri-urban areas, and they host more than 22,000 families.5 Currently the people with access to this programme come from the low to middle-income class, while originally, in the 1970s, the cooperatives were composed mainly of unionising working class (notably blacksmiths), and often each cooperative was linked to a specific labour sector and thus a labour union affiliation (Nahoum, 1999).
Even if, over time, some technical aspects changed due to the evolution of social customs and urban spatial regulations,6 the MAHCs’ basic elements and values remain unchanged since their establishment in the late 1960s. The basic elements characterise a MAHC are: (i.) the cooperatives own the land and buildings (mainly housing, but also common spaces, such as community halls, sports halls, commercial premises, schools, etc. cfr. illustration 1), while the inhabitants have the right to use housing units (and transmit them along family line) and benefit from common spaces; (ii.) the cooperatives are structured as communities, which collectively set up their own rules, regulating the common life of the group; (iii.) all cooperatives’ members are compelled in the construction of the buildings. The concept of “mutual aid” as inscribed in the specific denomination of MAHCs, refers to a solidarity pact among participants. All members commit some of their time and work capabilities to the edification of the common. This process lasts, on average, three years during which, a member of each household must spend between 21 and 24 hours per week on the construction site (Nahoum, 2013).
The collective ownership led the community to build an environment of solidarity and guards against housing speculation as the properties remain outside the private market. By law (no. 13728 of 1968),7 the inhabitants are not allowed to resell their house on the market, but they can sell it back to the cooperative at a fixed price.
During the creation process, the community is structured in different commissions with specific functions relating to each phase of the cooperative development8 (De Souza et al., 2021).9 An IAT, made by at least four professionals specialised in different fields (architecture, sociology, law and economics) is meant to assist this self-organisation of the MAHCs.
2. The origins of the paradigm
The historical development of MAHCs started as an attempt to find a solution to the housing crisis of the late 1960s in Uruguay. The post-war context and the arrival of a great wave of migration from Europe meant that the number of housing units available for the population was largely insufficient. Thus, in 1966, technical professionals of Uruguayan Cooperative Centre (Centro Cooperativista Uruguayo – CCU)10 proposed and led three experimental projects (the cooperatives of Isla Mala, Éxodo de Artigas and Cosvam), which were later used as the basis for the MAHC paradigm. This experience was spearheaded by a group of architects who were looking for a viable (i.e. cheaper) alternative to create social housing for the growing working class of the country at a time when the public sector did not have the means to entirely fund such projects at the national scale (De Souza and al., 2021). The main revolutionary idea behind the MAHCs initiative was to complement the limited state’s funding with the involvement of future inhabitants in the construction process.
In 1968, two years after the first MAHCs pilot project, the positive feedback led to the publication of a legal framework formalising this arrangement.11 The housing law (No. 13.728 of 1968) allows the cooperatives: (i.) access to a set of public lands (each municipality still has a portfolio of lands reserved for cooperatives today); (ii.) a loan from the State bank, the Banco Hypotecario de Uruguay12 with a 2% interest rate; (iii.) access to the support of a technical team (ie. IATs), whose fees are capped by law at a minimum rate of 7% of the overall project (MVOTMA, 2020). Another important incentive in the MAHCs paradigm is that 15% of the total public loan is non-refundable, as it is regarded as a salary paid by the State for the work provided by the inhabitants (Solanas Domínguez, 2016; De Souza and al., 2021; Mariani et Pérez Sánchez, 2024).
Illustration 1
Different housing units, with private and common gardens – Cooperative Nuevo Amanecer- Mesa1, historical MAHC, born in ‘70s.
Illustration 1
Historic mutual aid housing cooperative Nuevo Amanecer in Montevideo.
The common hall of the MACH’s site is considered an essential place of cooperative life: it is where the meetings of the various committees and general assemblies take place, and for this reason all cooperatives must have one – Cooperative Nuevo Amanecer-Mesa1
Ph. authors, Montevideo, 2019.
On the ground floor of these MACH’s buildings, there are shops belonging to the cooperative and rented by inhabitants (of the cooperative or not)– Cooperative Nuevo Amanecer- Mesa1.
Ph. authors, Montevideo, 2019.
Children’s play areas, and to the right a gymnasium. If these facilities belong to the cooperative, they are also available to the neighbourhood inhabitants – Cooperative Nuevo Amanecer- Mesa1.
Ph. authors, Montevideo, 2019.
3. Professional support for self-building in Uruguay: from an individual to a collective perspective
In Uruguay, professional support to housing self-construction projects has been integrated in national public policies for a long time. Even before the insurgence of MAHCs, in the 1940s the municipalities started individual affordable housing programmes (Programas de vivienda económica individual), to address the housing shortage due to massive migration from Europe.
The 1941 “economic plan” (i.e. Programas de vivienda económica individual) in Montevideo is one of these public initiatives for individual social housing. It introduced assisted self-construction complemented by individual loan, in the urban context.13 Additionally, in 2011, the Ministry of Housing Territorial Planning and Environment (MVOTMA), with the support of departmental governments, implemented another similar project: the Assisted Self-Construction Programme (Programa de autoconstrucción asistida). Notwithstanding some minor modifications, this programme is still ongoing in the 20 largest municipalities, offering citizens the opportunity to access architect-designed projects for self-building. Hence, citizens gain access to standard architectural plans for different models of dwellings (one, two, three or more rooms) with step by step instructions for the self-construction process and techniques (De Souza, 2022).
Unlike many other countries in Latin America that have considered the inhabitants’ self-building practice as illegal and abusive, Uruguay has incorporated it into its public policies, integrating them with professional shadowing and accompaniment at the individual scale for the Programma de vivienda económica, while MAHCs applied the same principle to the collective scale.
In the case of MAHCs, future inhabitants undertake technical work (both physical and administrative) assisted by a team of professionals (the IAT). To obtain the loan and begin the construction process, all cooperatives must follow a preliminary “training course in all management and building tasks involved in construction” (Duyne Barenstein and Pfister, 2019) taught by the assigned IAT. This phase of MAHCs realisation relies on the support of the IATs helping the cooperative’s members of the cooperative to learn the basic principles of a community and organise themselves to act together, commonly, share values and intentions to gain access to safe and affordable housing.
Research questions
IATs as commoning gatekeepers
According to the literature, “commoning” experiences tend to ultimately succumb to excessive institutionalisation, whereby the policy makers and institutional actors involved progressively take charge of the overall projects at the expense of the involved communities. Notably, according to Shelby assessments (2022) on the Thai case of Baan Mankong, the intervention and the appropriation of the process by the public institutions led to a transformation of the common principles. This author insists that a common based on an ascendant practice of “commoning” (understood here as a practice of collective claiming), and then appropriated, supported, and in this case co-opted by the public powers, would necessarily transform into a top-down instrument. Therefore, according to Shelby, the institutionalisation of the commons would change the basis of the common model, severing the links to its original grassroots movements. This institutionalisation of the commons’ dynamics deprives them of their bottom-up alternative and revolutionary features challenging the neoliberal speculative system and turns such experiences into standardised instruments of public policy. The MAHCs’experience seems particularly useful to understand how intermediary actors (in this case the IATs), between the communities and the institutional framework that regulates the commons, help to avoid this process of commons’ vanishing. In this paper, we examine whether this intermediary action is a necessary condition for the preservation of commons. Is intermediation key to enable commons to remain faithful to their original contestatory movements while simultaneously ensuring the legal recognition that protects and promotes them?
The case of MAHCs, examined through this analytical lens, presents a singular instance where the intermediary actors embody hybrid entities thanks to their status of technicals: simultaneously institutional stakeholders, don’t as decisions makers but decision advisors and proponents, and at the same time the professional figure who provides inhabitants with the tools to become autonomous as a community. Thus, in their capacity as technical advisors, they advocate for a public policy instrument that grants autonomy to commons’ initiative. From the beginning, they facilitate the creation process of these initiatives, acting as guardians of their independence from institutional co-optation. This dual role positions them as both catalysts and custodians of the commons’ autonomy within the broader institutional framework. And at the same time, they entrusted by policy makers with the responsibility of enabling communities to translate the urban commons projects (ie. MAHCs) in line with the legal framework provided. The IATs, as teams of professionals, serve as technical support for the community and as “a guarantee of legal compliance” for the implicated institutions.
A distinctive feature of this case study, in contrast to a more widespread path of commons creation originating from grass-roots movements, is that the idea of creating MAHCs stems from this technical stakeholder (the CCU, as we recall in the historical reconstruction of the experience). This occurs despite the presence of a substratum of trade union movements that supports the associated claims, which subsequently evolves into FUCVAM (the Uruguayan federation uniting all mutual aid housing cooperatives).
This paper explores if IATs’ intermediation, preventing the transition from “commoning” to “being commoned”, has somewhat been conducive to MAHCs’ endurance (physical and ideological). The paper enquires on whether the presence of such an intermediary figure creates a buffer zone, which contributes to the endurance of the organisational autonomy (in a network) of communities and of the ideology underlying commons. We maintain that IATs’ role alter the classical power relations between inhabitants and public institutions and substantially contributes to arresting the degeneration of the common experience into an institutionalised top-down instrument.
Objectives
If several factors can contribute to the sustainability of MAHCs’ commons (the legal framework, the support of an activist movement, the self-building process, etc.) however, we deem that the IATs’ original assisting method, implementing an “accompanied participatory” process, based on knowledge transmission to inhabitants and co-creation of knowledges (related to the conception and fabrication of territories), bears an empowering element which fosters the unity and cohesion of the community. Our analysis aims to demonstrate how this strategy not only empowers inhabitants but also promotes a community-led territory building process. We contend that this approach serves as an essential safeguard against classical institutionalisation dynamics that impact the nature of commons and their development.
Literature review
Albeit Spanish academic literature is extensive, MAHCs have seldom been the focus of research in other languages.14 Some assessments about this topic analyse the key role of the social movements’15 claim of the right to a decent and safe home for all in Uruguay that led to the creation of MACHs (Nahoum, 1999; Nahoum, 2012; González Soto, 2013; González Soto, 2018; Duyne Barenstein and Pfister, 2019; Machado Macellaro, 2020). Extensive academic (and operational) research also confirms the importance of political support for the promotion of this paradigm by the urban policy framework in Uruguay (Aristondo, 2003; Richer, 2010; Folléas, 2012; Urbamonde, 2015; HIC, 2017; Moreno, 2018). While a large part of this literature discusses the centrality of inhabitants in the process and describes the projects (MACHs) as community-led (Urbamonde, 2015), few focus on the inhabitants’ structural organisation into communities (Noel Sosa, 2015), on the relationship between inhabitants and IATs, and especially on the IATs’ role, with a few exceptions (Duyne Barenstein and Pfister, 2019).
The analysis of the IATs’ role in the commons’ endurance and preservation allows us to explore the scientific literature about their key instrument for this objective: participation practices. This introduces the debate about reshaping the producer-consumer relationship for territory construction and the transformation of, not only but especially, architectural and urban planners’ professional practices in this process. This allows us to dwell on: (i) the legitimacy of expert and amateur knowledge, and, consequently, (ii) the power relationship between professionals and inhabitants in the dynamics of spatial production. Thus, we discuss professionals’ commitment to accepting, integrating, and fostering other modalities of spatial production, different from the hegemonic construction industry, which, at the time, subverted the classic top-down approach and created a “commoning” process.
Residents participation in the urban production process alongside professionals has been a topic of debate since the end of the 20th century (Turner, 1972; De Soto, 1986; Rudofsky, 1987; Bacqué, Rey & Sintomer, 2005; Blondiaux, 2008). This debate radically challenged the classic categorisation of stakeholders: (i.) the professionals, who carry out the project and (ii.) the inhabitants, who receive the final product of the project, ready to use. This literature questions this clear-cut separation and suggests an alternative perspective on the urban (mainly habitat) production process, whereby future inhabitants integrate the project as of conception and throughout material construction. Academic work (Nez, 2011) on this supply chain alteration analysed the issue of the inhabitant’s legitimacy, previously perceived as a non-professional and non-savvy stakeholder, to take part in the decision-making process of urban creation. Some authors (such as Bacqué and Sintomer, 2011) argue in favour of such legitimacy. They postulate the need for end-users’ knowledge as it would inform and complement the urban professionals’ expertise with the future inhabitants’ true needs.
The debates about inhabitants’ contribution to the definition of their environment are associated with Lefebvre’s world-renowned concept of “right to the city” (1968): the right to participate in shaping one’s city and urban life. Forty years later, Harvey (2008) offered a refined interpretation of Lefebvre’s concept as the “collective power to reshape the processes of urbanisation,” which should promote the development of new “social links” between city dwellers. This reinterpretation seems to call for (i) reshaped urban creation processes, (ii) the involvement of new actors, (iii) subverted power hierarchies, and to underline the importance of human interactions. However, as Garnier (2014) noted, both Harvey and Lefebvre remained vague on the ways to achieve this citizen reappropriation. The translation of the “right to the city” in an operational way, has often been interpreted as the “practice of participation” and more generally as a form of “participatory democracy”: a mechanism conceived by public authorities to integrate inhabitants into the decision-making process on urban production, usually at a small scale. Moreover, the concept of “participation” was interpreted differently over the years as: consultation, co-conception, involvement in construction, formation and transmission of knowledge and/or construction practices and tools.
This uptake of inhabitants’ relevance in urban production over the last sixty years ultimately challenged the role of city professionals, mainly architects and urban planners (De Carlo 1977, Rincon, 1997, Ratti, 2014). In the 1960s, according to Maffrand and Martinez (2001) “the static vision of the Modern Movement, which conceived of housing as a universal and rational design, was replaced by a more dynamic and flexible vision, transforming the concept of “housing product” into that of “housing processes””. At the time there was a shift in focus from the material product (such as a building) to the building process (including the conception act). This new school of thought maintained that such a change would ensure a better quality and performance of the end product, as the participatory realisation process would better account for the users’ needs. In the 1970s, this change of perspective nudged the architectural profession towards the “socialisation of architecture” (Ringon 1997). The reformist political movement of 1968 led the new generation of architectural students and teachers to integrate the social dimension of architecture within the architectural training and the profession’s practice. In this vein, numerous experiments included residents’ participation (Macaire, 2009), such as Christopher Alexander’s “pattern language” (1977). This book is essentially an urban manual, where the urban is treated as a language. Written by architects, it provides anyone who wants with the instructions and basic rules to conceive and create their own urban environment. At the same time, some activist architects and theorists argued for an “architecture without architects” (Rudowsky, 1987), calling on inhabitants to reconquer and share ancestral knowledge on how to inhabit and therefore to build; practices forgotten over time due to the progressive professionalisation of society (Turner, 1972). These developments triggered a feud in urban production between those arguing for the legitimacy of inhabitants’ participation and those trying to preserve the privileged scope of action of professional figures (mainly architects), leading to new compromising paradigms aimed at a balanced sharing of competences and resulting in a profound transformation of the architectural profession. Ultimately the affirmation of the participation process over urbanisation called on professionals to: (i.) withdraw from decision-making hegemony, (ii.) give up some of their competences to “non-professionals” and (iii.) consider new variables (i. e. self-construction, citizens’ knowledge, inhabitants’ space perception, etc.) in their work practice.
The Latin American context presents some peculiar aspects about these topics. The practice of self-building by the inhabitants (especially in the housing sector) is and was widespread throughout the region. Often, given the lack of public resources to produce low-incoming housing, public authorities condoned this self-construction practice but rarely integrated it into their public policies (like in the case of Uruguay with MAHCs and with the Programas de vivienda económica individual). This Latin American practice, while generally ignored or dismissed by local academia until 1980s, notably inspired western academic speculation in the 1960s and 1970s to consider the issues and implications of inhabitants’ involvement as well as their legitimacy to partake in the decision-making process (such as, for instance, the renowned case of the Peruvian barriadas, self-built neighbourhoods, analysed by Turner in 1972). In the Latin American academic context, theoretical exploration of these topics emerged after the development of practical applications. The legitimate involvement of inhabitants in the urbanisation process was conceptualised only in the late 1980s as an opportunity (De Soto, 1986). Initially, these informal bottom-up practices were treated and stigmatised in academia without a critical perspective regarding the official discourse that institutions produced and promoted about them (Matos Mar, 1984). Their revaluation goes hand in hand with the development of decolonial and critical theories of the 1980s in Latin America.
The literature on participation and that on commons converged in the 2010s towards the concepts of “open-source” architecture or urbanism (Sasse, 2011; Ratti, 2014). The open-source concept was mobilised by literature on immaterial commons, which are brought about through the co-creation and sharing of information and knowledge (Dardot and Laval, 2014). The “open source” definition brought about an unprecedented degree of horizontal levelling in the hierarchy of knowledge. End users’ and experts’ knowledge were given the same weight in the design of projects leading to collective intelligence results. The references to the computer world and informational commons were deliberately highlighted as the knowledge transmitted from professionals to inhabitants was referred to as a collective heritage, shared and co-fed. When this concept is applied to architectural and urban research, the emphasis is particularly on human interactions as new means of urban creation through the sharing of technical knowledge and collective action (a reading similar to Harvey’s reinterpretation of the “right to the city”).
Over the years, some academic literature attempted new definitions of the “common” concept. The “new commons” (Bodirsky, 2023) are meant to incorporate this horizontal feature, moving away from the idea of collective management of resources towards that of a physical and political structure built by citizens/communities for themselves. In this context, urban commons involve “participatory” practices. This recent literature argues for the renewal of the foundations of citizen participation, via revolutionised frameworks of traditional political life (Brossaud, et al. 2019). The revised concept of commons stemming from different collective experiences, albeit not unified, takes a new direction compared to the founding work of Elinor Ostrom (1990), which focused merely on economic and legal aspects. This literature draws attention to the fact that “there is no common without “acting together”” (Bollier, 2014) where the emphasis is on collective action regardless of the materiality or immateriality of the results. It contributes to filling gaps produced by approaches built on “doing together,” which require outcomes to be more tangible (Brossaud et al., 2019). As Festa (2016) asserts, the common is relational: it is produced and reproduced from encounters between subjectivities (Chatterton, 2010). The common is a build-up of productive moments that foster new vocabularies, continuous encounters between social and spatial practices and renewed relationships (Linebaugh, 2008). In most literature on commons, these sets of continuous exchanges that form the commons, do not account for intermediary actors, and the structural emphasis is on the independent community that negotiates with institutions to assert its position. However, there are several documented cases in the operational sphere where intermediary actors are active in urban commons. These stakeholders at the interface between community and institutions are often technical stakeholders, as shown by the Urbamonde report (2015), like in the case of CLT (Community Land Trust) and housing cooperatives around the world.
Hereinafter, we delve into the concept of intermediary stakeholders to integrate and complement the scholarly literature on power relations between groups of individuals (i.e. communities) and institutions during the commons’ establishment process (Borch & Kornberger, 2015; Foster & Iaione, 2016; Huron, 2018) as well as on the re-appropriation of this instrument of governance (i.e. commons) by institutions (Shelby, 2022; Levy et al., 2024).
Methodology
To analyse the “inhabitants’ accompaniment practice” in the MAHCs, we used a combination of questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. Between January 2019 and April 2021, we carried out fifteen semi-structured interviews16 with members of the two chosen housing cooperatives in Montevideo (the MACH Nuevo Amanecer and La Colonia), representatives of the FUCVAM (Federación Uruguaya de Cooperativas por Ayuda Mutua), members of technical teams (Institutes for Technical Assistance – IAT), representatives of the national cooperative federation and of the Uruguayan cooperative centre (CCU), representatives of institutions, and Uruguayan researcher specialists of MAHCs. We complemented these interviews with eighteen questionnaires targeted at IATs on a national scale, about professional practices. We sent the questionnaire to the IATs enrolled in public registers17 in order to have a representative sample. Notably, the questionnaire enabled us to reach a diverse sample of stakeholders despite the mobility constraints imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic.
While the interviews mainly focused on the detailed functioning of the different steps of the MAHCs’ manufacturing process (including shortcomings, opportunities and rationale), the questionnaire was structured around questions asking a reflexive approach from the IATs on their professional practices.
In addition, the direct cooperative member’s experience of one of the authors allowed for a closer assessment of certain observations raised during interviews.
Among the wider spectrum of all MAHCs experiences, our specific sample case consists of two such cooperatives located in Montevideo. Both cooperatives are worth investigating and comparing because, despite their proximity, they represent very different cases of urban organisation, different historical paths and conditions. MAHC Nuevo Amanecer is one of the first MAHCs cooperatives, existing since the 1970s. Originally, it was located on a peri-urban plot and was not subject to any legal limitation related to the number of residents in the premises. Today, this cooperative appears as a real neighbourhood with 420 housing units and services ranging from a school to a small clinic as well as commercial premises. The MAHC Colonia case is a far more recent project completed in 2018 (i.e. after the 2008 introduction of the legal limitation of 50 inhabitants per common) in the city centre encompassing 26 flats. We deem these examples to be two sufficiently different to illustrate how, despite the different timeframes, contexts, and social strata involved, the MAHCs dynamics and basic paradigm remain unchanged.18 After all, the key argument of the paper is to provide evidence about the pivotal roles of intermediary actors (i.e. IATs) within the broader context of cooperatives’ stakeholders’ organisation systems.
Findings
1. How do IATs accompany the creation and development of cooperatives?
2021 official records acknowledged the persistence of 62 IATs on a national scale (including the CCU).19 These are private entities (teams of professionals) mandated by the Ministry of Housing and Spatial Planning (Ministerio de Vivienda y Ordenamiento Territorial- MVOT) to support cooperatives in multiple aspects. Their fees are capped at 7% of the projects’ full cost. The law 13 728 (chapter X, section 6), establishes these professional entities and clearly defines IATs as “those professionals that provide services to cooperatives and other non-profit entities at a fixed minimal cost. The services provided include: (i) cooperative education, (ii) legal, financial, economic and social support, (iii) technical assistance for architectural project and construction management”.20 Thus, the mission of this technical team is to accompany cooperatives’ technical, social, legal and economic development at all stages of the process (Finn, 1999). Notably, IATs are legally compelled to hold different professional profiles: at least one architect, one social worker, one accountant, and one notary or lawyer.
In 1971, upon the approval of the Housing Law for the MAHCs institutionalisation, the government established a cooperative of technicians called Center for Technical and Social Support (Centro de Asistencia Técnica y Social – CEDAS)21 to bring together all the IATs and formalise the new type of accompaniment specific to MAHCs. Boronat and Risso (1992) noted that the objectives and expectations of MACHs’ participatory process as conceived by the IATs went far beyond strictly spacial principles:
“We conceive social participation as a process of technical-social participation, supported by educational work, which generates positive behaviour, solidarity and is oriented towards the development of a greater social conscience in individuals. This process becomes, in turn, an original way to investigate and decipher reality, leading to the elaboration and execution of a housing programme”.22
The aforementioned paragraph emphasises, on the one hand, how the participatory process serves first and foremost to create a strong sense of community solidarity and, on the other hand, how the architectural and technical outcomes are nothing more than the spatial translation of this: a way of arranging the space to correspond as closely as possible to the human structure of the specific community. The IATs are meant to investigate and try to understand the reality of a constantly changing and diverse society in order to adapt to it.
Notably, the creation process of a MAHC’s starts with a community, which generally comes together via: (i) personal links, or (ii) individual subscription to public registers of willing people, or (iii) FUCVAM’s intermediation in response to citizens’ demand. After the community’s establishment, the cooperative needs to be inscribed in the institutional register and contingently select the IAT of reference, which will accompany the common in all the consecutive stages, which include: (i) the assignment of a building plot, (ii) the definition the urban-architectural and technical project, (iii) the building permits’ requests, (iv) the application for a subsidised loan from the National Housing Agency (Agencia Nacional de Vivienda – ANV), (v) the self-construction phase and (vi) the continued maintenance of the project.
This process is detailed step by step in illustration 2, with a focus on the role of IATs in each of these moments.
Illustration 2
The MAHCs building stages and the role of IAT, step by step.
The authors, 2023.
Source: Official website of the ministry, section dedicated to MAHCs, consulted in July 2023.
Acronyms: ANV – National Housing Agency/MVOT – Ministry of Housing and Spatial Planning.
As shown in illustration 3, the CEDAS emphasises three main stages of the participatory process in which IATs assistance is crucial. Notably, each of these stages is supported by different professional figures within the same IAT.
Illustration 3
Historic mutual aid housing cooperative Nuevo Amanecer in Montevideo.
The authors, 2023, Source: CEDAS, report No 9.
The administrative phase, entailing the draw-up of the statute of the cooperative, the cooperative charter and the socio-economic study of the project. In this phase the IAT’s lawyers and accountings play a major role;
The programmatic phase where the main social elements (i.e. the community’s shared life rules) of the project are established through workshops, questionnaires and meetings. In this phase the IAT’s social workers take over by leading a collective dialogue within the community;
The conception/construction phase refers to the building project and its implementation. In order to begin the construction phase, the cooperative must develop a complete architectural project including its connection to all relevant infrastructure and services and obtain the building permits. As soon as the projects are validated all members of the cooperative are supposed to participate also in the physical work of construction under professional oversight. The architects of the IATs play a central role in this third twofold stage, notably, supported by the lawyers/notaries and accountants with regards to the procurements’ contracts.
As confirmed by one interviewed professional, IATs act as intermediaries between the MAHCs and the various public institutions involved in the process. “We participate with the cooperative group in meetings with responsible institutions and in the cooperative’s internal assemblies from the stage of the building plot selection, often until the end of the construction process. We help future inhabitants to understand the distinct elements affecting the project drawing from the municipal legislation, the regulation of the MVOT, the land accessibility provisions, the firefighters reglamentation, etc. We strive to involve the group in the decision-making process and show digital models to facilitate the group’s spatial understanding”.23
2. An “accompanied participation practice”
Via a “knowledge transferring” approach, the IATs and the cooperatives’ members conceive together the architectural and urban project, according to the reciprocal specific needs and demands. Starting from standardised plans,24 IATs and inhabitants organise meetings to co-conceive the organisation of the individual and collective spaces. According to architects of the IATs, designing a project feasible for future inhabitants to build themselves (as an unskilled workforce) is one of the major technical challenges. Some IAT members answered that the greatest differences between the IAT experience and other more “traditional” work contexts are, in fact, the dealings with unskilled workforce (involved on a personal level) and the pressure stemming from the awareness that the project is a commitment to build something for the community as well as for the individuals involved. “Of course, the participation of unskilled labour, forces us to develop ad hoc projects and to implement training sessions within the group”.25 The construction phase is also a difficult ordeal for the inhabitants as they are compelled to collectively and laboriously learn several construction trades, usually in moments normally devoted to rest. In fact, most MAHC’s members work, during the day, in their respective professions, while during evenings and weekends, they go to the construction site. Many cooperative members remember this moment as very hard and difficult, but also, they pin it as the moment that consolidated the community and created an essential component of the common: the solidarity, the mutual aid in the community.26 MAHCs’ process of self-construction is twofold: individuals actively participated in the edification process as well as in the structuring and establishment of their community. Other IAT architects argued that the most striking differences with more usual working practices lay especially in the multiplicity of roles that an IAT architect was called to play. In the cooperative the architect is not only a designer and a site manager but also a manager of procedures, a construction teacher, a site management teacher, a consultant for the selection of construction site staff, subcontractors, materials, a mediator between cooperative members with issues.27 Another testimony highlights the complexity of interdisciplinary work, and the trade-off of having to match IATs’ professionals’ working hours with those of the cooperative members: “(…) the difference lies in the interdisciplinary work and in how the group’s work is supervised. Although site management is quite similar, working with a (inhabitants and professionals) group also involves greater dedication to meetings, generally at night, to explain processes and take decisions with the participation of the cooperative’s commissions. Working with other disciplines also means more effort on issues that are not dealt with in “traditional building missions””.28
These testimonies by architects of the IAT teams describe some of the specific features of this professional practice, which, as we can infer, is shaped differently across cooperative groups. Throughout the entire process, the IATs teach inhabitants how to manage the work site, the financial and legal aspects of the project as well as elements of social cohesion. Professionals monitor the process and transmit to the community the methodological tools needed to self-manage: they support the organisation of “commoning” cooperative action and at the same time they help the cooperative to achieve (and maintain) its independence.
3. Working together for community building: subverting standard production relations
“A cooperative is built not only through the construction of buildings but also through that of a human community”29
“The situation sometimes seemed paradoxical: I was paying my boss, the one who made me work hard and gave me orders on the construction site”.30 The testimony of a member of the Colonia cooperative (in Montevideo), even if caricatured, seems to illustrate well the paradigm shift in this participatory process between cooperative members and professionals, customers and service providers. In the first phase of conception, the architect and the MAHCs members cooperate towards the definition of the societal and architectural project. However, in the construction phase, the future inhabitants become both the site managers and the site-workers. The roles are almost subverted, creating new dynamics that sometimes may appear “paradoxical” according to the hierarchical relationships that regulate the traditional building production chain: the architects supervise their clients’ building work, as experts who ensure safe construction and working conditions. As another IAT architect tells us: “This is a close relationship and we are in a continuous consultation process. In my experience, during the construction phase, we have at least one weekly meeting with (internal cooperative) commissions, a monthly (general) assembly (with all cooperative members) and at least a weekly visit to the building site with the building commission and the contracted foreman”.31 Another testimony of an IAT on the relationship technical team-cooperative: “The relationship with the client (i.e. the cooperative members) compared to a traditional building project, and this is mainly due to the degree of members’ participation in the whole process. We must also consider the complexity stemming from the presence of multiple stakeholders who influence decision-making”.32 This statement refers at the same time to a series of institutional actors (the ministry-MVOT, the National housing agency, the municipality and its various departments) as well as private actors (the construction companies, suppliers, technical cabinets, craftsmen) that are, at one time or another, involved in the finalisation of the project. In addition, this broad set of stakeholders must interact with MAHCs (and their heterogeneous members) trying to apply methodologies passed on by the IATs in order to self-regulate and take collective decisions.
As for the relationship with MAHCs members, some professional argue : “we try to work as a team and establish a horizontal relationship”.33 IATs accompaniment of MAHCs often continues after the end of the building process, as some team members tell us: “we continue to advise the cooperative on each of our disciplinary areas of competence, by telephone or with on-site visits. We have made this a habit with all the cooperatives we have worked with. We have a very good relationship with all of them, we are a support and a reference in my opinion”.34 In many instances, the bond between an IAT and its cooperatives endures even beyond the construct phase. The inhabitants explicitly ask to continue and renew the bond with the IAT leading to confirm that the essence of the MAHCs projects does not end with the material buildings’ realisation, but results in a much broader social project. A MAHCs project never finishes, because, first of all, communities and their needs are in continuous development. Therefore, the accompaniment of IATs continues to be solicited to accompany all kinds of progressive transformations. To note, a technical accompaniment following the realisation of the project is not compulsory nor foreseen from a legal standpoint, however the cooperatives may solicit the intervention of the IATs via a private framework (also with regards to remuneration).
Conclusion
As demonstrated by previous research (Simonneau and Denis, 2021; De Souza et al., 2021), MAHCs can be described as land-based commons for housing. In this paper, we associate the “commoning” with the process of material and non-material self-construction of the MAHCs, and we argue that the intermediation of the IATs is a key factor for the facilitation and endurance of this process.
This perspective on IATs’ role adds nuance to existing research on the topic. If Duyne Barenstein and Pfister (2019) retrace the history of IATs and describe the ‘professionalisation of the social movement’. While these authors emphasise the relevance of the social movement that underpin the formation of the MAHCs and underscore its progressive structuring and professionalisation, this phenomenon is more traceable on the international scale (Valitutto, Simonneau, Denis, 2024). At the national level, it was technical professionals (CCU) that perceived the value of the practical bottom-up experience and initiated the formal conceptualisation and implementation of the MAHCs paradigm aligned with activist values.
Building on this historical context, we can examine the broader implications of the MAHCs paradigm. The Uruguayan MAHCs experience questions various aspects of commons’ integration to the city building, and in particular the role of associated professional in this process. The knowledge transmission process between professionals and the communities leads to the subversion of the canonical way of thinking and producing urban space. It introduces a collective construction process that reclaims a central role for the inhabitants and the community. Professionals support the structuring of an independent community and act as promoters of a collective intelligence. IATs provides the action tools (i.e. sociological, administrative, economical and architectural) that empower inhabitants and allow this “doing together”. We can ascribe this process to a form of “open-source urbanism”, as theorised by some authors (Sassen, 2011; Ratti, 2014): a horizontal co-building exercise, based on shared tools, knowledge and values. In the MAHCs case, the common pool of resources also includes knowledge and information. Notably, the creation of shared and collective informational commons (on community management, community life, collective construction, etc.) is essential for the formation of urban commons. This approach to commons formation has significant implications for urban development. We maintain that the generation and dissemination of knowledge (i.e. the creation of collective intelligence) constitutes an act of “commoning”. Our analysis suggests that Uruguayan public institutions formalised IATs with the intention of providing citizens with the “mother code” (in an “open source” urbanisation process) allowing them to own it and update it through a process of collective learning. In the case of MAHCs, institutions play a supportive role (economic and legal) for the commons, and they make the presence of this intermediary and technical actor mandatory, which allows MAHCs to establish their independence as a community.
The MAHC challenges traditional conceptions of commons in relation to institutions. Many scholars describe “commons” as entities in a continuous struggle with public institutions, and/or as alternatives to the State management (Wall, 2014; Caffentzis and Federici, 2014; Hardt and Negri, 2009; Dellenbaugh et al., 2015). Commons, according to this “frame of reference” (référentiel) (Muller, 2010) presuppose a non-hierarchical form of self-government and of collective production described as ‘commoning’ (De Angelis, 2003; Gidwani and Baviskar, 2011; Hardt and Negri, 2009; Shelby, 2022). Perhaps the total absence of on-the-ground institutional support and/or a declared conflict with institutional and institutionalised stakeholders, ultimately do not protect commons from market speculation and other market dynamics, which, in the long term, often lead to their disintegration. It seems that the presence of technical intermediaries allowed the common model to ripe the benefits of being incorporated in a legal framework, while, at the same time, it ensured its independence and endurance. As a result of this specific accompaniment practice which technically supports a common’s action without triggering appropriation mechanisms, IATs became a protective and empowering filter between commons and public institutions.
Drawing from these observations, we can extrapolate broader implications for commons management. This analysis prompts us to consider the crucial role of intermediary actors in the management, protection, and creation of commons. Our case study demonstrates the beneficial effects of such actors in preserving and nurturing commons. A key question emerges: Can the presence of an intermediary actor be generalised as a functional element in safeguarding commons from institutional recapture? The Uruguayan case presents a scenario where these intermediary actors exist partly due to institutional support, functioning in some ways as an extension of the institutions themselves. This unique positioning raises multiple questions for the debate about the relationship between commons, intermediaries, and institutions. Our analysis also leads us to examine the significance of the professional/technical identity of these intermediary actors. The question thus arises as to whether other types of intermediary actors could be possible, and if so, what characteristics they might possess and how they might function. Furthermore, the participatory accompaniment practice developed by the IATs seems to be a crucial component in the process of community construction and empowerment that structures the common. But does it enable the inhabitants involved in creating the commons (i.e., MAHCs) to genuinely appropriate the project as their own? Can this approach prevent the perception of the initiative as top-down, even when it is institutionally promoted?
Notes
[2] We will understand here as system basics: community management, common ownership of land and buildings, self-construction; and as system principles: solidarity, anti-speculation.
[3] Although this is uncommon in English, in this paper we choose to use the verb “accompany” or its noun “accompaniment” when we describe IATs’ interactions with inhabitants/cooperatives members. We choose to use this term instead of the more common “support”, because we believe that “accompany” carries a nuance in itself that emphasises the horizontality of the relationship which goes beyond a classic working relationship and is centered on the human aspect of the relation.
[4] Section 6, Article 171 of Law No. 13728 of 1968 (link: https://www.impo.com.uy/bases/leyes-originales/13728-1968).
[5] Source: https://www.fucvam.org.uy/situacion-demografica-de-fucvam/ official site web of FUCVAM, consulted 25/09/2021.
[6] Some examples of these technical aspects are: the type of buildings, which today are higher than in the past thanks to technological advances and the shape of the flats that changes nowadays in accordance with the different family unit compositions; etc.
[7] This law has framed the system of mutual aid housing cooperatives since 1968. It was enacted after the first pilot experiments in 1966.
[8] Tax Commission, Electoral Commission, Education, Promotion and Cooperative Integration Committee, Construction Committee, Work Commission, Administrative Commission.
[9] To know more about the functioning and the history of Uruguayan mutual aid housing cooperatives, see:
De Souza I., Valitutto I., Simonneau C. (2021). Las cooperativas de usuarios en Uruguay, El desafío del hábitat como común. Papier de recherche n. 214, mai 2020. Éditions AFD. Paris.
https://www.afd.fr/es/ressources/cooperativas-usuarios-uruguay-habitat-comun.
[10] Born in 1961, the Centro Cooperativista Uruguayo is composed of professionals from architecture, law, economics and social work. It defines itself as a non-governmental organisation for the promotion and development, with a national scope that works throughout the country, with population groups whose resources are medium, medium-low and low. It seeks to improve their quality of life through alternative community development with respect to the prevailing social system. It seeks the organisation of people in self-managed associative groups and their articulation within the cooperative movement, focusing its actions on popular collective housing, savings and credit, handicraft, industrial and agricultural production. The CCU’s mission is to assist in the promotion of sustainable development through the support of cooperative initiatives.
Source: http://ccu.org.uy/sobreccu, the official CCU web site, consulted on 22 December 2023.
[11] Juan Pablo Terra, a member of parliament and an architect, was instrumental in the MAHCs’ institutionalisation.
[12] Starting from 2008, with the renewal of certain clauses in the legal framework, the loan is provided by the National Housing and Urbanisation Fund (FO.NA.VI y U).
[13] This policy was established through the Departmental Decree 3486 and it was strengthened by the Popular Housing Section inaugurated in 1945.
[14] This seems the central raison to explain the scarce knowledge of this paradigm in Europe, Africa, Asia, North America and elsewhere, both in the academic and operational spheres, and to understand the geographies of its spread, mainly in Latin America and Spain.
[15] With this notion we refer to a very particular context for MAHCs: the trade union movement of the 1960s and 1970s that gave birth to the cooperatives, but also, later, the network of militant local as well as regional ‘right to housing’ associations that perpetrated the struggle, in particular the FUCVAM (federation of mutual aid cooperatives) in the country.
[16] We had 4 interviews with MAHCs’ residents, 3 interviews with members of the FUCVAM, 3 with members of the technical teams, 1 with a member of the Uruguayan cooperative centre (CCU), 2 with representatives of institutions, and 2 with professors and researchers in Uruguayan National University leads a chair about MAHCs.
[17] Since 2007, the National Housing Agency, within the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment, made a list of all IAT in free access for the cooperatives, and in 2021 they are about 62 in all the country.
Housing Ministry of Uruguay site web: https://www.gub.uy/ministerio-vivienda-ordenamiento-territorial/comunicacion/publicaciones/listado-iat-actualizado.
[18] More information on these two case studies is available in the appendices of:
De Souza I., Valitutto I., Simonneau C. (2021). Las cooperativas de usuarios en Uruguay, El desafío del hábitat como común. Papier de recherche n. 214, mai 2020. Éditions AFD. Paris.
[19] The CCU is the first technical team, which created the MAHCs paradigm and institutionalised the professional figure of IATs.
[20] Translation by the authors. Original text : “Aquellos destinados a proporcionar al costo servicios jurídicos, de educación cooperativa, financieros, económicos y sociales a las cooperativas y otras entidades sin fines de lucro, pudiendo incluir también los servicios técnicos de proyecto y dirección de obras”.
[21] CEDAS is an old institution, now dissolved, which, in the form of a cooperative, brings together all the technical teams responsible for accompanying the inhabitants in the process of self-construction.
[22] They cite the CEDAS report No 9, which expresses the IAT objectives.
Translation by the authors. Original text : “Concebimos la participación social, como proceso de participación técnico-social, apoyado en una labor educativa, generadora de conductas positivas, solidarias y orientadas al desarrollo de una mayor conciencia social en los individuos. Dicho proceso se convierte a su vez, en una fuente de investigación de la realidad, mediante lo cual es posible conocerla, llegandose de este modo a la elaboración de un programa de vivienda y su ejecución”.
[23] Translation by the authors. Original text, extract from the questionnaire: “Se participa con el grupo en reuniones con directiva y en asamblea desde la etapa de búsqueda de terreno, en general, hasta la concreción del trámite ante las oficinas públicas. Se trata de explicar las distintas razones que condicionan el proyecto en cuanto a normativa municipal, reglamento del producto del MVOT, accesibilidad, bomberos, etc. Se trata de involucrar al grupo en las decisiones y se presentan maquetas digitales de las opciones para facilitar la comprensión”.
[25] Translation by the authors. Original text, extract from the questionnaire: “El trabajo con mano de obra no calificada y el compromiso que tiene cada obrero cooperativista que sabe que está construyendo algo que será para él y el grupo, aumentando así el compromiso con las tareas ejecutadas. Por supuesto también, el contar con mano de obra no calificada nos obliga a desarrollar los proyectos pensando en su participación y a desarrollar estrategias formativas en el grupo”.
[26] Juliette Chilowicz’s research work recompiles many testimonies in this regard.
Chilowicz J. (2019). Construire et vivre dans une coopérative de logement par aide mutuelle en Uruguay. Master 2 Urbanisme et Aménagement de l’Université Paris 1 – Panthéon Sorbonne et en partenariat avec l’AFD. Sous la direction de E. Debis et S. Barles. https://cfuhabitat.hypotheses.org/files/2019/11/Memoire_Juliette_Chilowicz.pdf.
[27] Translation by the authors. Original text, extract from the questionnaire: “En un contexto tradicional el arquitecto es proyectista y director de obra netamente, en el proyecto cooperativo el arquitecto es proyectista, gestor de trámites, director de obra, profesor de construcción, profesor de gestión de obra, asesor de selección de personal de obra, subcontratos, materiales, psicólogo para mediar en problemas de convivencia durante obra”.
[28] Translation by the authors. Original text, extract from the questionnaire: “Hemos trabajado en los dos ámbitos y la diferencia está en el trabajo interdisciplinario y en la forma de hacer el seguimiento de la obra con el grupo. Si bien la dirección de obra es bastante similar, trabajar con un grupo implica también mayor dedicación a reuniones, generalmente nocturnas, para explicar procesos y tomar decisiones con la participación de las comisiones de las cooperativas. También el trabajar junto a otras disciplinas implica mayor dedicación para tratar situaciones que en la obra civil no se tratan”.
[31] Translation by the authors. Original text, extract from the questionnaire: “Relación estrecha y de consulta permanente. En mi caso, al hacer la dirección de obra, hacemos mínimo una reunión semanal con comisiones, una asamblea mensual y una visita semanal mínima a obra con comisión y capataz”.
[32] Translation by the authors. Original text, extract from the questionnaire: “Cambia mucho en el vinculo con el cliente por el grado de participación en todo el proceso. También la intervención de múltiples actores que influyen en la toma de decisiones”.
[33] Translation by the authors. Original text, extract from the questionnaire: “Tratamos de formar equipo, es una relación horizontal”.
[34] Translation by the authors. Original text, extract from the questionnaire: “Seguimos aconsejando aunque la cooperativa este finalizada desde cada una de las áreas que ellos lo necesiten. A través de consultas telefónicas o visitas a obra. Esto es una constante en todas las cooperativas que hemos construido. Tenemos un muy buen relacionamiento con todas, somos un respaldo y referente en general a mi juicio”.
Acknowledgements
We would like to deeply thank all the actors who agreed to discuss with us and answer the questionnaire, for the time they granted us and their kindness. Without them it would not have been possible to carry out this study. We also want to thank the AFD (French Development Agency) for financing the trips that allowed these meetings. We would like to thank Claire Simonneau et Eric Denis for their encouragement and advice, without which this article would not have seen the light, and we would also like to warmly thank Petra Liberty Hunt for her careful and painstaking editing of this text. The authors also wish to thank the reviewers for their knowledgeable feedback.
Funding Information
The first author is a PhD student at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University (France) with a background in architecture and urban planning.
The second author is Master in Architecture Project and he is architect, teacher and researcher at UdelaR (National University of Uruguay) on Social Interest Housing issues (Cooperatives and other public housing policies). He was part of a housing cooperative in the interior of the country, where he lived between 1980 and 1998.
Competing Interests
The authors have no competing interests to declare.