Land should be a public good—not just private property
An introduction by the Center for Land Economics.
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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.”
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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"
johnalt.substack.com › utopian cities and modern fiat money
Would be very much interested in your comments on what I've written!
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.
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.
Land access to all. Cities and good governance 💙💛.