Policy Proposals for Land Commons in France

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URL = https://societedescommuns.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/LIVRET-4-FONCIER.pdf

Detailed proposals in the French context. Below are translated excerpts only.


Description

"Land commons are characterized by shared, inclusive, and collectively governed ownership of urban and rural spaces. They distinguish themselves from the exclusive and absolute conception of ownership by renewing the functional scope of property rights. Thus, the market or utilitarian value of land gives way to its environmental, social, and democratic values."

(https://societedescommuns.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/LIVRET-4-FONCIER.pdf)


Characteristics

If land ownership remains essential in the fundamental rights of our Western societies, it is necessary to mitigate its most problematic social and environmental effects. Public ownership may appear in some cases as an alternative to private ownership, but it shares a strong similarity with the latter in the way it establishes the preeminence of the rights and interests of administrations as owners of public goods. To break out of this "proprietary order," we advocate a third way that institutes land as a common good: socializing ownership, defending its democratic management, and putting it at the service of preserving natural, urban, and rural spaces.


  • Ensuring ecological management of spaces

As shown by the work of Nobel Prize laureate Elinor Ostrom, commons allow for sustainable management of spaces. Land is no longer managed by a single owner but by a group of stakeholders who ensure its preservation over time, for their common interests as well as for those of future generations.


  • Guaranteeing access to essential spaces for human development

An alternative to speculative land grabbing, land commons allow for a fairer and more solidarity-based distribution of urban and rural spaces necessary for individual and collective emancipation. They facilitate access to housing, the establishment of third places, the installation of young farmers, and the development of local agricultural production means. The solidarity initiatives that emerge in these spaces thus provide essential services to populations by prioritizing their social use function over their market exchange value.


  • Revitalizing democracy

Land commons not only guarantee access to social living spaces but also contribute to their collective management. This active participation in maintaining our common spaces strengthens civic engagement and social bonds."

(https://societedescommuns.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/LIVRET-4-FONCIER.pdf)


Policy Proposals

"The right to property as defined in the Civil Code was conceived more than two centuries ago for a society very different from our own. Following in the footsteps of the work on commons by Elinor Ostrom, the Rodotà Commission in Italy, and the Mission Droit et Justice in France, we advocate for the evolution of land property rights that fits into a long historical context (see the box on the heritage of traditional commons, page 4).

The general proposal we outline in this booklet can be summarized as follows: it is urgent to commonize land, meaning to normalize and support forms of social and collective ownership.

Concretely, this involves reorganizing rights among communities of use, governance, and control:

  • Community of Use: Urban and rural spaces necessary for human development must be established or maintained as collective, inalienable properties whose access is guaranteed within a logic of social justice.
  • Community of Governance: These shared spaces must be democratically managed by all stakeholders, particularly the users, who have collective interests associated with these spaces.
  • Community of Control: These spaces must be preserved for future generations. Collective organizations must ensure they are managed with an environmental sustainability logic.

The more inclusive these three communities of use, governance, and control of land spaces are, the more the ownership of these spaces will be considered as tending towards the commons. Thinking of land as a common allows addressing the challenges posed by modern property rights to balance the interests of owners, whether public or private, with the interests of citizens, nature, and future generations."

(https://societedescommuns.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/LIVRET-4-FONCIER.pdf)

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