A Guide to Transformative Land Strategies: Lessons from the Field - MIT Colab

This moment of COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter mobilizations demonstrates that ecosystems of economic democracy and community governance are critical for a just recovery and a just economy. The top-down responses to the pandemic are exacerbating the racialized gap in ownership of land and wealth, lack of democratic control over what happens on land inhabited by communities of color, and the power of extractive finance to determine development patterns. Many frontline communities seeking to secure democratic control of development have turned to models of collective ownership, such as community land trusts (CLTs) and permanent real estate cooperatives, as one part of a platform for land and housing justice. This guide synthesizes the strategies of transformative community land organizations (TCLOs): those that share the guiding principles of decommodification of land, racial justice, economic democracy, and transformative politics.