Land should be a public good—not just private property
An introduction by the Center for Land Economics.
his is the introduction to “Let Cities Build Utopia,” an 11-part essay series on the future of cities. I am beyond grateful to the Center for Land Economics who supported this series as a patron and whose co-founder, Greg Miller, wrote this foreword. I highly recommend his newsletter Progress & Poverty which was a valuable part of my research.
To build a city is to work backward from a vision of how we might best live together. It is an act of looking toward the horizon of utopia, not as a final destination, but as a guiding star that helps us navigate the complexities of the present.
In her sweeping investigation, Let Cities Build Utopia, Elle Griffin takes us to the shorelines and city centers where this vision has taken root. She unearths a truth often obscured by the rapid pace of development: there are repeatable blueprints for building cities that are more stable, more humane, and more prosperous for the people who live in them.
From the community-purchased soil of the Scottish Highlands to the sophisticated leasehold towers of Singapore, a recurring pattern of resilience emerges. Again and again, these examples point to a common orientation: Economies organized around long-term stewardship rather than short-term extraction, and land treated not as a speculative asset but as a shared resource meant to support housing, livelihoods, public goods, and collective flourishing.
This work serves as a vital reminder that the ground beneath our feet is a natural resource intended for communal benefit. When a city is permitted to return the value it creates to the community that creates that value, it becomes a social benefactor—a place where the very act of living and working contributes to the beauty, the safety, and the security of one’s neighbors. It transforms the resident from a mere tenant of the economy into a stakeholder of it.
The Center for Land Economics (CLE) is proud to support Elle’s work. Her investigation invites us to reconsider our own cities. At CLE, we start with the conviction that land should be treated as a public good. This piece establishes that such a future is not just a dream—it is already within our reach.
— Greg Miller
Co-Founder, Center for Land Economics
Author, Progress & Poverty
This is part one of Elle’s essay series titled “Let Cities Build Utopia.”
Click to read the next installment »
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There's plenty of land. More land than anyone knows what to do with.
But the land that matters is land that has been developed; cities, towns, highways, quarries and factories, to name a few.
Show me just one Utopian with an engineering degree. What Utopian can actually plan a community that functions? Tell me how this community is any different than anyone else's. How is their electric grid any different? What about their manufacturing base? Do you think materials just fall from the sky? What will you use for money? Who will do the building, given that any utopian I've ever met has no clue how to build anything? What about crime? Are you just going to think nice thoughts and hope that everyone else does, too?
This has been talked about before, tried before, and failed every time.
I'll show you several utopians who built functional communities throughout this series.. 🤓
OK. I'll want to see that they did it with no capitalist produced products.
Certainly, people can and do form communes and do things more or less off the grid. If it's what they want, I'm for them doing it. That's just not Utopia to me.
Every successful utopian city has capitalist produced products. Cities need an economy!
As I've written before, I am very anti-commune. I don't think that's utopia. This series is not about communes. It's about cities.
We already have cities. We already have capitalism.
I'm not understanding what distinction you are making.
Some cities are good places to live and some are not. This series explores how we can create the best possible city for residents (the most utopian).
OK. I'm interested in seeing your views.
This is a great introduction to a very interesting "white paper" on the topic of Utopian Cities.
I have just posted an essay on my Substack "Paying For It" that offers an ADDITIONAL strategy for financing Community Land Trusts. The title of the essay:
"Utopian Cities and Modern Fiat Money--An Alternative Finance Mechanism for Elle Griffin"
https://johnalt.substack.com/p/utopian-cities-and-modern-fiat-money
Would be very much interested in your comments on what I've written!
Geoism and utopianism in one post. No, thank you. Private property and good protocols, please. Our emergent cities will beat your grand plans any day of the week.
Georgism IS private property. But you’re right, emergent cities are able to do even more where they own the property outright and I am very for that too. What other protocols would you like?
Georgism is NOT private property. It becomes quasi-private because people have to pay state proxies rent for the land they purportedly own. Protocol design, clear rules around prices, private property, profit/loss, and attention to externalities and injuries by or against other landowners -- all allow landowners to create their own Utopias, which differ from one person to the next and from one community to the next. The character of emergent cities as compared to planned cities is striking. And the idea of natural land rents is dubious at best.
Land rents aren't the only way to do it. Give me an emergent city you think is the ideal. I bet they have a lot of control over their land....
Why, in a series called "Let Cities Build Utopias," should I have to point to a non-Utopian (emergent) city? Why, in a post called "Land should be a public good—not just private property," are you arguing that Georgism is private property and also a public good? (So you agree that it becomes quasi-private?) In any case, there are only continuua of cities that currently exist -- planned to emergent. Now, I admit Hong Kong and Singapore are fairly good examples of long-term land-lease models. Brazilia is an unimpressive planned city, too, as is Milton Keynes. But Tokyo is enormously dense, and is an emergent city. And it's more accessible for buyers relative to income, with lower price-to-rent ratios and better mortgage affordability.
You said emergent cities with private property beat land rent models any day. I was just asking how they beat them? By what metric? What makes them better?
That's why I asked for your ideal emergent city so we could compare and see what makes it better. I guess I didn't think of Tokyo as an emergent city but a well established metropolis.
Did you not read this? "But Tokyo is enormously dense, and is an emergent city. And it's more *accessible* for buyers relative to income, with lower price-to-rent ratios and better mortgage affordability." Affordability is an important consideration, particularly for the least advantaged. Many a well-established metropolis is an emergent city because they weren't designed by town planners--which is rather the point. It's anti-Utopian. And my objection is more to the planned utopia piece than the long-term leases, but I have reservations about those, too.
I would also argue that Georgism is not exactly the same as long-term leasing. Georgism, historically, was simply a land-value tax, which in the digital age is an increasingly regressive tax. Google might use less land than a farmer, for example, but the farmer might be taxed relatively more, despite less revenue. Long-term leases are George-ish, to be sure. But...
Quasi-private property also politicizes property, creating a greater imbalance between the people and the powerful who award those leases. Once you politicize property, you create frictions and unintended consequences that invite further interventions and unintended consequences (ad nauseam). And increasingly, government authorities make centralized decisions, effectively picking winners and losers. It's an unnecessary corruption vector.
Ah! Ok I see where there is a disconnect. I'm not using "utopian community" synonymously with "masterplanned community" here. Masterplanned communities can be both utopian and dystopian, as you've pointed out. I'm using "utopian community" synonymously with "ideal place to live."
And yes, affordability is a very important part of that! Tokyo has absolutely created that.
I agree that Georgism is not the same as long-term leasing, and I actually prefer land ownership and long-term leasing. (That solves many of the challenges you just mentioned, including that it's less politicized!) Georgism is simply a way for cities as a whole to profit where they don't own the land and thus can't lease it.
Another way is to give cities the same tax autonomy a state has, as in Switzerland. But more on that in the series...
Excellent. I think we're not so far apart, then. I look forward to the series as I find this issue endlessly fascinating, not least because local is where the action is and more ought to be (not national). And on this, I think we largely agree. If we can each try our 'utopian' experiments locally, we can attract more community members in peaceful competition. (Hurray decentralization!)
Exactly!!! Cities should be able to earn a profit and use money and land for the benefit of those who live there! And cities should be the richest entity, followed by states, and then the fed. In other words, the area closest to our lives should have the most money and power over our lives (and where our vote matters most) and the area furthest away should have the least money and power (and where our vote matters least!).
Utopia should happen locally, and in many varieties!
I will only add that I think there is a broader concept: ensuring the community benefits from progress, and this means that when a place gets nicer and land/location becomes more desirable, that value (whether it be dollars or metaphorical) be returned to the community that made that place valuable. Elle's first installment will speak directly to this point, in a valuable way.
I don't think there is one avenue toward that vision. Land value taxes are one vision, land-leasing is another, and there are likely other ways to think about this issue. It will need to be balanced against any concerns of consolidating power -- consolidated power is always prone to abuse. Government is not unique to this concern; wealth inequality matters as money is power.
Elle is not saying you ‘have to’ or ‘should’ point to an example of an ‘emergent city’ Her caring question made sense to me who has very limited experience in ‘city planning’ much less the fascinating depth of research and ideas of how to make the world a better place that Elle Griffin has been so generously sharing.
Here's the thing about "depth of research and ideas on how to make the world a better place." If one bills it as utopian and presents it all with a certain degree of ambiguity, it is perfectly reasonable for a reader to interrogate. And in turn, it's completely reasonable for Elle to ask me to be more precise in how one defines an "emergent" as opposed to a planned city (in turn). Elle is smart enough to know that building a new city-state or special jurisdiction requires coming down to earth and working on the particulars. Painting impressionistic pictures is far less costly, even though that's a necessary (though insufficient) part of vision setting. Still, when part of the "research" is about comparing cities that don't exist, with ones that barely exist, with ones that are 50, 100, or 1000 years old... Or comparing some with long-term leases with private property with a big mix of public and private, with community trusts, rent control, and so on, we have to ask what features she's picking out to idealize. // All that said, I have benefited from this interaction and believe we are closer to a consensus on these matters than I'd first thought. But the interaction let me know that, and Elle was gracious enough to let me be a gadfly.
Land access to all. Cities and good governance 💙💛.