Towards a Typology of Collaborative Housing in Colombia

The renewed interest in collaborative housing in Latin America highlights the need for analytical frameworks that capture regional specificities. This paper contributes to academic and policy debates by proposing an empirically grounded typology of collaborative housing based on the Colombian case, where diverse initiatives exist but remain marginal within the national housing system. Drawing on an analysis of 20 initiatives, we identify four distinctive types: the “Eco-Communitarian”, “Developer-led”, “Resistance” and “Political”. These are differentiated by actors and instruments enabling their emergence, sustainability and scalability in time, and by factors that give way for technical and architectural innovation. By providing a comprehensive analysis of the diversity of collective self-organized forms of housing provision, and an analytical framework that allows to differentiate and compare different initiatives beyond Colombia, we aim to contribute to this growing academic field and to inform housing policies.