Contact: Mrs. Gaia Redaelli
FCN members since: 2018
Profile: Heritage communities, housing cooperative, urban regeneration, social innovation
Membership status: Active
Context
The PAX Association was founded in 2018 in Córdoba (Spain) by a group consolidated as a non-profit cultural association, which studies and promotes the recovery and update of lifestyle in community in the courtyard houses of the historic center of the city -which has 4 UNESCO declarations - in order to maintain the residential use of these traditional dwellings throuhgt its rehabilitation by citizens.
It is currently focused mainly on the Axerquía, an area made up of different neighborhoods of the historic center, which suffer from depopulation and are threatened by gentrification, having a large presence of traditional typologies (courtyard houses), in many cases empty or underutilized.
The rehabilitation of the abandoned courtyard houses in Córdoba aims to restore the environmental value of the Mediterranean city and to upgrade its historical characteristics in a contemporary way, together with the local community. PAX seeks to lay the foundations for the creation of a Heritage Community as a bottom-up strategy for urban rehabilitation and social innovation.
Description of Activity
PAX works with public and private entities and, above all, with neighborhood associations and citizen groups with the aim of sharing a way of living around the patio and its intangible value, uniting its inhabitants as a Heritage Community. Part of its action plan is:
- to identify empty traditional patios as tangible heritage in the historic center of Córdoba;
- to work with Local Labs in order to create groups of people interested in launching a housing cooperative. After discussing the needs of each housing cooperative, PAX helps to find the best courtyard house to meet those needs, so that the tangible heritage (the building) is a consequence of the intangible heritage (the way people live together) ;
- to acquire the yard or persuade the owners to have PAX reuse it with the Community;
- to implement the rehabilitation of patios in a contemporary way respecting their architectural and heritage value;
- to finance the project in cooperation with ethical partners;
- to scale the strategy to other similar cities.
The strength of the PAX project is based on the consolidation of a Heritage Community around urban regeneration and the social recognition of a rich material heritage, which in turn sheds light on the intangible heritage to which it is tied. On the one hand, PAX facilitates the co-management of an ecosystem that links citizens, social entities, institutions and universities. On the other hand, the housing cooperative is an instrument for building a Social and Solidarity Economy (economic activities that prioritise people and the environment over maximising profits), which in turn contributes to community cohesion in a patio.
The cooperative model aims to offer a more sustainable solution in response to the real estate bubble in Córdoba, the depopulation of the city centre, as well as unsustainable tourism in the city.
