Public, democratic ownership of the commons
May 2, 2019 8:07 AM   Subscribe

“Attacking gentrification is only the beginning of a socialist response. We need to reorient our perspective to embrace land not as an extractive resource to exploit, but a part of our community to nurture, a neighbor to live with in harmony. A Green New Deal gives us the opportunity to push for democratic control of the land through policies such as land banks, community land trusts, and the restoration of Native stewardship. Before we get to how a GND must confront land-use, let’s talk about the origin of land-use policy in the U.S” It Begins With The Land: Land use has been a tool of oppression, but it can also be a tool of our liberation.
posted by The Whelk (3 comments total) 22 users marked this as a favorite
 
This seems to be to be imagining Point Z (a GND socialized land policy) without considering any of the effects of getting there from Point A (and as an illusion I paraphrase Elvis Costello "a poor little schoolboy says we don't need no lessons".) Those interested in this don't need it, and the asides about growing food on vacant lots and air travel are kind of silly and wouldn't convert any detractors. I've never got the idea that everyone living in the city next to a vacant lot wants to be a gardener. They mostly don't, and the ones that do are already doing it, just at a small scale. Build something more useful there, and let the farmers farm!
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:58 AM on May 2, 2019 [2 favorites]


I agree with the article's general point that GND needs to do a better job of addressing the impact of the inefficient, segregationist, environmentally-damaging, inequality-driving and generally lousy land use policies in the US at the federal, state and local levels. But I don't think that GND also has to bring back harmonious and sustainable Indigenous land use practices (which is itself a debatable historical proposition) and end global capitalism as we know it in order to succeed. Its a lot less dramatic, but personally I'd be satisfied by more discussion of introducing Land Value Taxes, which at least try to address at a very fundamental level some of these distortions and damages.
posted by RandlePatrickMcMurphy at 9:32 AM on May 2, 2019 [1 favorite]


This was a challenging read. Very few specific policy proposals, and many of the specifics that were listed seemed laughably distant from present state. "Food forests" are cavalierly proposed, with total disregard to the land use transformation involved in creating them, to decades of academic work on agricultural sustainability and efficiency.

I absolutely adore community gardens. They provide green respite in an urban setting, connection to culture and community for diverse neighbors, and some fresh food, but they are absolutely not a scalable solution to feeding the 'dense cities' proposed in this same article.

I like the general sentiments here, I think? But I wish this gave specific, real, scalable solutions, or at least grounded the big picture vision with more of these meaningful specifics. Because I think land use IS key to social equity and environmental survival. And the land use changes we require are going to piss off people on the right and on the left.

You want dense urban environments? You should if you want to move away from car dependance and sprawl. But density means we give up our precious single family zoning that 'liberals' love as much as conservatives. It also means white people give up their inherited wealth that resides in housing equity. [Me (white) was able to buy a house in the expensive bay area because my parents gave me the money. They had the money because of equity in their house, which they (white) bought with a downpayment from my grandmother, who, although an immigrant and Jewish, was still white, so was able to buy a house in redlined post-Depression Boston suburbs.]

We're going to have to pay a lot higher property and state and gas taxes to pay for high speed rail and rapid buses. We're going to have to allow our parking lots to be torn down and replaced with mid and high rise mixed income apartments. We're going to have to replace car lanes with bike and rapid bus lanes, which means our cars will go slower and we'll have nowhere to park them. We're definitely going to have to do away with overnight delivery from fucking Amazon, not to mention all the garbage we buy from Amazon. Because production of this garbage is a poison that spoils land mostly in the Third World, and the waste from the garbage also creates a massive misuse of land.

So.... I don't know, I think it's great that this person is raising the issue of land use, but I hope to see a lot more writing on this that goes into more specifics, deals with solutions that scale, and is willing to kills some liberal sacred cows.
posted by latkes at 4:14 PM on May 2, 2019 [1 favorite]


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