The place is called F?lleshaven. Yes, it is another compound word. F?lles means ‘common’ and haven means ‘garden’. It is a bof?llesskab. F?llesskab means ‘community’ and bo means ‘to live’. A bof?llesskab is a co-housing scheme which originated in Denmark but rapidly spread to the rest of Scandinavia and onwards.
The initiators were families and individuals who were discontent with then current ways of living. One of them was Bodil Graa, who wrote an opinion piece called ‘Children Should Have One Hundred Parents’ in one of the major papers in Denmark and asked for like-minded people to get in touch with her. Many did and, five years later, in 1972, the construction of the bof?llesskab S?tterdammen was finished. It consisted of twenty-seven independent houses and a large common house and is situated near Hiller?d, north of Copenhagen. It still exists today, and seventy people live there. They have a waiting list of those who would like to buy vacant homes. Today, around fifty thousand people live in co-housing in Denmark and it is still growing in popularity.
One of the hundreds of Danish bof?llesskaber is F?lleshaven, where my friend Mikkel grew up. It is home to sixteen families, among them twenty children. The bof?llesskab is designed for privacy as well as community. It means that each family has a private home with all the traditional amenities, including its own private kitchen. Yet the private homes are clustered around a shared space – a garden and a large communal kitchen and dining area. The families live separately, yet together.
If they feel like it, from Monday to Thursday the families eat together. Usually, there are between thirty and forty people at these dinners; a meal for an adult costs around 20 kroner (approximately ￡2.25) and those for kids are half price. To give you an idea of how little this is, I can tell you that a café latte in Copenhagen will set you back 40 kroner.
But it is not the price of the communal meals that is appealing to most people here. Especially for the families with young children, it is the fact that, four nights a week, there is no logistical juggling act of grocery shopping and preparing dinner. Instead, they help the kids with their homework, play kubb or teach them how to build a good campfire. One week every six months or so, they form part of the crew who prepares the dinner, and the older kids help out and learn how to cook. The food shift usually takes three hours, from preparing the food until the dishes are finished – obviously, with a break to eat dinner and a cup of coffee afterwards. But on most nights, residents at F?lleshaven can relax and wait for the bell that tells them dinner is ready.
Besides the dining area and the campfire, F?lleshaven also has a shared vegetable garden, a playground and playing field, an art studio, a workshop and spare guestrooms if people have too many guests to put up in their own homes. The set-up also means that the children always have someone to play with. Not once have the families had a need to hire a babysitter. If the parents want to go to the cinema or see a play, they just send their kids to their friends across the yard.
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According to the Office of National Statistics in Denmark, the number of bof?llesskaber has increased by 20 per cent in the past six years. It is especially attractive to families looking for supportive environments for their kids, and to elderly relatives, who are in danger of falling into social isolation.
A couple of years ago, the Danish anthropologist Max Pedersen did a large study of seniorbof?lleskaber, co-housing for the elderly, and found that ‘it is difficult to see the data and statements as other than a success for the bof?lleskaber’: 98 per cent reported feeling safe in their community, 95 per cent were satisfied with their living situation – but I think the most interesting data was that 70 per cent reported having at least four friends among their neighbours.
What about you? Do you know the names of your neighbours – and would you call any of them your friends?
How many of your neighbours would you describe as friends?
Number of neighbours described as friends by Danes living in bof?lleskaber
Source: Max Pedersen, The Great Experiment (Det store eksperiment), 2013
The bof?lleskaber scheme is now gaining momentum around the world, and increasing in popularity in Canada, Australia and Japan. Hundreds have already been established in Germany, the US and the Netherlands. In 2014, the Guardian reported that more than sixty co-housing projects were in the pipeline in the United Kingdom. Jo Gooding, coordinator of the UK Co-housing Network, describes these projects as ‘self-managing communities, independently governed by the people who live there’.
Like the place where Mikkel grew up, the design encourages social interaction and attracts single elderly people who want to live neither in isolation nor in conventional housing for old people, and families who gain when raising their kids and working at a career by living in a supportive environment. According to the Guardian, there was a 100 per cent increase in groups forming between 2012 and 2014, and at least eighteen projects have been completed, with ‘a definite trend towards cities’, including London, Cardiff, Newcastle, Leeds and Cambridge.
As a happiness researcher, that makes me, well, happy. But you do not need to be a happiness researcher to guess what effect a stronger sense of community, an increased feeling of safety and security and more and closer friendships have on people’s happiness.
Naturally, the balance of privacy and communality is critical in these models and a bof?llesskab is not for everyone, but perhaps we can take elements of what works and apply them in new settings. It’s clear that being part of a tribe has a positive effect on our well-being. So, let’s look at some concrete steps you can take to enhance the community spirit in your neighbourhood.
FIVE WAYS TO PLANT A COMMUNITY
1. CREATE A DIRECTORY FOR YOUR STREET OR STAIRWAY
Knock on your neighbours’ doors and introduce yourself. Alternatively, for us introverts, drop a sign-up sheet in everyone’s letterbox. You can tell people that you are creating the list in case of burst pipes and other emergencies. Ask for names and contact information, but also consider adding a questionnaire to help you get to know people better. Would you babysit a dog or cat? (Yes! Also, can I please walk the dog once in a while?) What is your favourite book? (I’m always torn between The Great Gatsby and A Farewell to Arms.) How many languages do you speak? (Three on average. After a bottle of wine: five; before my morning coffee: barely one.) Try and focus on skills that might be of use to other neighbours. Who is good with computers? Who knows how to change a tyre? Who knows how to preserve fruit?
2. ESTABLISH A BOOK-LENDING CUPBOARD
A simple way to start the conversation in your community is to establish a mini-library built on the take-one-leave-one-book principle. The library doesn’t have to be anything fancy or contain the entire collection of the Library of Alexandria.
In my stairway in Copenhagen, I’ve just put books on top of the rack of letterboxes. It makes the stairway more homely, it is fun to watch which books get picked up and it encourages interaction between the neighbours. The current collection in my stairway includes titles like A Concise History of Architecture, The Great Gatsby and Introduction to Statistics. For some reason, the first two seem to be the most popular.