Cyclic Functional Collaboration: A scientific approach to housing

Housing research is very diverse operating across many disciplines. It is characterised by a broad range of methods, approaches and purposes. It is also very fragmented with researchers having very little sense of how different types of research relate to one another. If we are to promote collaboration among researchers and find solutions to our pressing housing problems, we need a framework which will hold this diversity together. Housing research is about asking and answering questions. Few researchers, however, reflect upon the questions they ask and the type of answer their questions anticipate. This paper proposes ‘a framework for collaborative creativity’. It contends that if we examine the questions underpinning all these different research methods, we will find that each is primarily oriented towards answering a particular question within a group of eight questions. The paper proposes that a scientific approach to housing consists of asking a complete set of eight inter-related questions: an empirical question, a theoretical question, an historical question, an evaluative/critical question, a transformative question, a visionary/policy question, a strategic question and a practical question. These questions are functionally inter-related, they provide a framework for inter-disciplinary collaboration and, they are ongoing and cyclic producing cumulative and progressive results. Housing researchers can distinguish these eight questions by reflecting upon themselves and their work. The paper draws upon a discovery by Bernard Lonergan, a Canadian methodologist, philosopher, theologian and economist ([1957]1992, [1972]1990).