“Is community-led home ownership the way of the future?”

“We’ve been told that we need to live in iso­la­tion, to have our own house away from others, to have our own land to be safe,” says Simone Kidner, one of the founders and first res­i­dents of an inno­v­a­tive housing project in Golden Bay. “What this has done has pushed us away from each other and led people to be dis­con­nected from the whenua.”

Kidner, an Edmund Hillary Fellow orig­i­nally from the UK, will soon be living in a unique space. Instead of rows of town­houses that max­imise space to cram in as many people as pos­si­ble, the Tākaka Cohous­ing Neigh­bour­hood offers an alter­na­tive way of living, one based around community.