IN-PERSON: Livable Cities – New York

Abstract

Property plays a crucial role in shaping a society’s coexistence. The subdivision of land into private property is traditionally defined by a one-to-one correspondence between parcel boundaries and a landowner’s rights and responsibilities. However, these alignments are never so clean—a condition particularly apparent when it comes to living in an urban environment. Environments of such scale are usually structured by an urban grid—a grid that represents a spatial apparatus to govern and manage different interests, among them the most predominant one, landownership, public and private alike. Thus, the notion of the grid plays an ambivalent role, as its geometry does not just relate to form, it reveals the presence of a spatial configuration closely tied to socio-political relationships—relationships that form an association towards ownership. Many of the grid’s underlying logic—ownership, liability, maintenance, belonging, and profit—can be transformed towards more inclusive settings. In other words, property can redistribute wealth, not just protect it. It can proliferate resources, not just extract them. Community Land Trusts, for example, take land off the market and enable their residents to begin managing their land collectively. This requires a different understanding to ownership. Given my research interest in how space of collective living has been influenced via ownership in urban conditions, this paper will explore modes of ownership that challenge the accumulation of wealth by investigating regenerative ways of living based on reflective, responsive, and reciprocal relationships of interdependence between human communities and the living world upon which we depend.