Build it like you mean it : replicating ethical innovation in physical and institutional design

this chapter builds on research into challenges for innovation in developing, designing, building and occupying households with the dual aims of sustainability and affordability (see Crabtree 2006a, 2006b). how to replicate or foster innovation through the housing system was a key challenge identified in that work (see Crabtree and hes 2009). this research therefore focuses on issues related to disseminating innovation in housing tenure and governance forms, to sit alongside work on issues related to disseminating innovation in housing design and occupancy - specifically 'cohousing'. Cohousing has manifest as small-scale community-driven developments of around 30 or 40 households. recently cohousing groups in the united states have partnered with affordable housing providers to more easily deliver affordability. this generates several issues of interest, including tensions between community-based and institutional imperatives, and how to scale up or transpose an ideologically conceived design agenda without prescription. My interest concerns design of institutional arrangements that can underpin innovation in affordability and sustainability, such as Community land trusts, and how to broaden these collaborative, hybrid structures and normalise these within housing systems. physical and institutional design has a core role to play in facilitating (unconsciously) benign behaviour.