On Common Ground

Cabannes and Ross revisit the Garden City, originally proposed by Ebenezer Howard over 100 years ago, to ask how his vision might be delivered in a modern setting. Community land trusts, they argue, provide a partial answer, serving as “a vehicle for gradually assembling land and putting Garden City principles into practice – now not later.”

What is On Common Ground?

ON COMMON GROUND is a collection of original essays, written by 42 scholars and practitioners from a dozen countries, tracing the growth and diversification of the international community land trust movement.

A community land trust (CLT) is a transformative strategy of community-led development on community-owned land that has taken root in the Global North and is now spreading to the Global South. CLTs produce and preserve affordably priced homes, community gardens, retail spaces, and a variety of neighborhood facilities – all developed under the guidance of the people who live nearby; all managed to remain permanently affordable for people of modest means.