“The European urban areas are growing fast, with many contemporary housing forms. Among these, co-housing forms related to sharing have become a key issue for urban housing development. These housing forms are analysed (their physical and social characteristics or effects) in more and more publications, without a common terminology of this interdisciplinary research field. In our study, based on the overview of existing definitions, characteristics we introduce a comprehensive sharing based categorization that could be valuable for terms and projects, as well. With the note, that the social dimension of sharing methods would not exist without the physical ones, because in co-housing the shared space is the basic criteria. In this paper, we focus on three groups of the social fields of sharing related to housing: the shared creation, the shared tenure, and the shared activities. We conclude the structural approach of our overview unravels new perspectives for the classification of housing forms. Based on our categorization and methodology, we recommend the development of a sharing based scalable classification that measures projects consistent and comparable.”
