The housing project where young and old must mingle
An experiment in collective living in Helsingborg, a small seaside city in southern Sweden.
Known as Sällbo (which combines the Swedish words for companionship ‘sällskap’ and living ‘bo’), the project asks all residents to sign a contract promising to spend at least two hours a week with one another. Just under half the tenants are young people under the age of 25, and the rest are pensioners. Most live alone, although a few have relocated as couples or brought their pets along.
“We try to work against loneliness, to make people be more socially included.”
This project looks at the loneliness of young people, and people from all backgrounds.
The Sällbo project is also hoping to mitigate some of the more negative effects of the global trend for digitalisation, such as spending increasing amounts of time online, gaming or on social media.
“I think the project has some promise because it is directed to two specific groups of ‘lonely living’ people – young people and the elderly – who are in a temporary phase where you still might look out for connecting with other people,” says Gunnar Andersson, a professor of demography at Stockholm University who studies living trends in Sweden. “By being together – different categories of people - it decreases segregation and also gives a better quality of life.”
My reflections：
In addition to children, communication and joint participation in activities with young people might be feasible.
It could be considered whether some mandatory requirements should be added, and it needs to be contextualised to estimate whether mandatory requirements could achieve unexpectedly good results as this project did.
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