While Zurich is a center of global finance, it also has a century-old commitment to public benefit and nonprofit housing, implemented through a cooperative model of resource-sharing. Moreover, these cooperatives have been at the forefront of innovations in architecture and urban design. While the Zurich model cannot be fully transferred to cities in the United States, there are lessons to be learned from its long-standing commitment to nonspeculation within a for-profit real estate market and for the role of design in that work.

At this event, Susanne Schindler, an architect and urban historian who co-authored Cooperative Conditions: A Primer on Architecture, Finance and Regulation in Zurich, described key aspects of Zurich’s cooperative housing system. A panel of leading local officials and practitioners then discussed whether and how the Zurich approach could be applied or adapted for use in Boston and other communities in eastern Massachusetts.

This event was co-sponsored by the MIT Morningside Academy for Design, the MIT Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism, and the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.

• Susanne Schindler, Research Fellow, Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies
• Sheila A. Dillon, Chief of Housing, City of Boston
• Kathleen Evans, Senior Director of Capital Deployment, MassHousing
• Nia K. Evans, Executive Director, Boston Ujima Project
• Declan Keefe, CoFounder, CoEverything
• Moderator: Justin Steil, Associate Professor of Law and Urban Planning at MIT.