The members of the Collective share a vision beyond facilitating better, cheaper and more manageable retrofit, planned maintenance and energy renovation work. We recognise the gravity of the systemic issues facing us all as we seek to make the necessary just transition in the face of the climate, biodiversity and other planetary crises. We consider that an essential part of overcoming the challenges to a sustainable future is a revitalisation of the sense of mutual support and power that comes from well-developed and more resilient communities with a more sharing/reuse-based and circular economy operating within planetary boundaries.
We see collaborative community-led multi-property building improvement and retrofit work as a win-win element of a bigger process; in essence part of a theory of change. Our view is illustrated in overview in this Resilient Communities diagram, and explained further below:
The Resilient Communities diagram illustrates how – given the necessity for (and desirable advantages of) building improvement and retrofit for all – through seeking to work at increasing levels of community trust, and embracing the existence of shared interests and ownership, community-led retrofit work can be seen as a step in the progression from:
- working individually, to
- proactively shared maintenance, to
- collectively-led retrofit works at shared-building level and then beyond, to
- street or community-level sharing of the common realm and development of shared resources (such as shared district heating), to make the community more resilient to future shocks and also more cohesive and capable of mutual support of all sorts in challenging times.
This way of working and focus of activities has the advantages of also resulting in tangible benefits in terms of affordable comfort and health of our homes, economies of scale in getting the work done and getting it done to high standards with good quality assurance, whilst contributing practically to significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions.