On Common Ground

On Common Ground
Author: John Emmeus Davis
Publisher:
Total Pages: 502
Release: 2020-11-08
Genre:
ISBN: 9781734403008

Land that is owned and managed for the common good is a hallmark of community land trusts. CLTs are locally controlled, nonprofit organizations that steward permanently affordable housing (and other assets) for people of modest means. This book explores the global growth of CLTs in twenty-six original essays by authors from a dozen countries.

The Land Is Our Community

The Land Is Our Community
Author: Roberta L. Millstein
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 198
Release: 2024-08-12
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0226834476

A contemporary defense of conservationist Aldo Leopold’s vision for human interaction with the environment. Informed by his experiences as a hunter, forester, wildlife manager, ecologist, conservationist, and professor, Aldo Leopold developed a view he called the land ethic. In a classic essay, published posthumously in A Sand County Almanac, Leopold advocated for an expansion of our ethical obligations beyond the purely human to include what he variously termed the “land community” or the “biotic community”—communities of interdependent humans, nonhuman animals, plants, soils, and waters, understood collectively. This philosophy has been extremely influential in environmental ethics as well as conservation biology and related fields. Using an approach grounded in environmental ethics and the history and philosophy of science, Roberta L. Millstein reexamines Leopold’s land ethic in light of contemporary ecology. Despite the enormous influence of the land ethic, it has sometimes been dismissed as either empirically out of date or ethically flawed. Millstein argues that these dismissals are based on problematic readings of Leopold’s ideas. In this book, she provides new interpretations of the central concepts underlying the land ethic: interdependence, land community, and land health. She also offers a fresh take on of his argument for extending our ethics to include land communities as well as Leopold-inspired guidelines for how the land ethic can steer conservation and restoration policy.

Rooted in the Land

Rooted in the Land
Author: William Vitek
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 308
Release: 1996-01-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9780300069617

This book is dedicated to the notion that human lives are enriched by participation in a social community that is integrated into the natural landscape of a particular place. The writers explore the loss of community, the philosophical foundations of communities, Amish communities, and the current renewal of community life.

This Land Is Our Land

This Land Is Our Land
Author: Jedediah Purdy
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2021-05-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 0691216797

A leading environmental thinker explores how people might begin to heal their fractured and contentious relationship with the land and with each other. From the coalfields of Appalachia and the tobacco fields of the Carolinas to the public lands of the West, Purdy shows how the land has always united and divided Americans.

The Land Was Ours

The Land Was Ours
Author: Andrew W. Kahrl
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 375
Release: 2016-06-27
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1469628732

The coasts of today's American South feature luxury condominiums, resorts, and gated communities, yet just a century ago, a surprising amount of beachfront property in the Chesapeake, along the Carolina shores, and around the Gulf of Mexico was owned and populated by African Americans. Blending social and environmental history, Andrew W. Kahrl tells the story of African American–owned beaches in the twentieth century. By reconstructing African American life along the coast, Kahrl demonstrates just how important these properties were for African American communities and leisure, as well as for economic empowerment, especially during the era of the Jim Crow South. However, in the wake of the civil rights movement and amid the growing prosperity of the Sunbelt, many African Americans fell victim to effective campaigns to dispossess black landowners of their properties and beaches. Kahrl makes a signal contribution to our understanding of African American landowners and real-estate developers, as well as the development of coastal capitalism along the southern seaboard, tying the creation of overdeveloped, unsustainable coastlines to the unmaking of black communities and cultures along the shore. The result is a skillful appraisal of the ambiguous legacy of racial progress in the Sunbelt.

The Rise of the Community Builders

The Rise of the Community Builders
Author: Marc A. Weiss
Publisher: Beard Books
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2002
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9781587981524

This is a reprint of a 1987 book * It is to be hand scanned, so as not to destroy the text or cover, and returned to Beard Books. The book deals with the evolution of real estate development in the United States, focusing on the rise of planned communities common in the American suburbs since the 1940s.

Living on the Land

Living on the Land
Author: Nathalie Kermoal
Publisher: Athabasca University Press
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2016-07-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1771990414

From a variety of methodological perspectives, contributors to Living on the Land explore the nature and scope of Indigenous women’s knowledge, its rootedness in relationships, both human and spiritual, and its inseparability from land and landscape. The authors discuss the integral role of women as stewards of the land and governors of the community and points to a distinctive set of challenges and possibilities for Indigenous women and their communities.

The City-CLT Partnership

The City-CLT Partnership
Author: John Emmeus Davis
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2008
Genre: Housing
ISBN: 9781558441811

The community land trust (CLT) movement is young but expanding rapidly. Nearly 20 community land trusts are started every year as either new nonprofits or as programs or subsidiaries of existing organizations. Fueling this proliferation is a dramatic increase in local government investment and involvement. Over the past decade, a growing number of cities and counties have chosen not only to support existing CLTs, but also to start new ones, actively guiding urban development and sponsoring affordable housing initiatives. Two key policy needs are driving increased city and county interest in CLTs, particularly in jurisdictions that put a social priority on promoting homeownership for lower-income families and a fiscal priority on protecting the public's investment in affordable housing. Long-term preservation of housing subsidies. With local governments now assuming greater responsibility for creating affordable housing, policy makers must find ways to ensure that their investments have a sustained impact. CLT ownership of the land, along with durable affordability controls over the resale of any housing built on that land, ensures that municipally subsidized homes remain available for lower-income homebuyers for generations to come. Long-term stewardship of housing. Preserving housing affordability requires long-term monitoring and enforcement, an administrative burden that local governments are neither equipped for nor generally interested in taking on. CLTs are well positioned to play this stewardship role by administering the municipality's eligibility, affordability, and occupancy controls, while also "backstopping" lower-income owners to protect subsidized homes against loss through deferred maintenance or mortgage foreclosure. Municipal support comes in a variety of forms, depending on how well established the CLT is. For example, local governments may offer administrative or financial support during the planning and startup phase, followed by donations of city-owned land and grants or low-interest loans for developing and financing projects. They may help a CLT acquire and preserve housing provided by private developers to comply with inclusionary zoning, density bonuses, and other mandates or concessions. As the CLT builds its portfolio, municipalities may provide capacity grants to help support its operations. Finally, local jurisdictions may assist CLTs by revising their tax assessment practices to ensure fair treatment of resale-restricted homes built on their lands. As welcome as their support has been, local governments may inadvertently structure CLT funding and oversight in ways that undermine the effectiveness of the very model they are attempting to support. The challenge lies in finding the most constructive ways of putting municipal resources to work in pursuit of common objectives. Based on a review of three dozen municipal programs and in-depth interviews with local officials and CLT practitioners, this report describes the mechanisms and methods that cities across the country are using to structure their investment in CLT startups, projects, and operations. In addition to describing the full range of options for providing municipal support, the report highlights specific model practices for rendering that assistance. These practices have the most potential to balance the interests of all parties by: protecting the public's investment in affordable housing; expanding and preserving access to homeownership for households excluded from the market; stabilizing neighborhoods buffeted by cycles of disinvestment or reinvestment; and ensuring accountability to funders, taxpayers, and the communities served by the CLT. The city-CLT relationship continues to evolve. This report ends with a discussion of three emerging trends: shifts in the city's role from supporter to instigator, and from participant to g

Let's Restore Our Land

Let's Restore Our Land
Author: Team for Care of the Creation
Publisher:
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2007-11-01
Genre: Christian ethics
ISBN: 9780965336031