Rethinking Communities, Land and Governance: Land Reform in Scotland and the Community Ownership Model

I’d like to start with a thought experiment: imagine being a planner in a place where community organisations have wide-ranging powers over land ownership and use. Residents can come together to form non-profit community organisations, which can purchase and develop land and buildings to meet their needs and set out a spatial policy for their local area. These organisations have open membership, are democratically governed and act in the public interest. They have legal rights over land, including first right of purchase for pre-identified sites, and for compulsory purchase. There is technical support available to build organisational capacity, as well as funding for purchase and development. As non-profit local landowners, any value derived from development or use is reinvested locally; for example, a community-owned business can provide funding for a community garden. These community organisations own key local assets that they identify, and they work collaboratively with other landowners (public and private) to deliver projects. In this model, communities’s role in land use planning systems is expanded – from a narrow role in commenting on others’ proposals for land (whether planning policy produced by government, or developers’ projects) – to include a range of options which arise from meaningful power over land. Communities could designate sites to protect land use, prepare a local plan, declare a preference for purchase should the land come up for sale, or force a sale in the interests of sustainable development. This approach is notably different to the role of community in planning in many contexts – this is emergent citizen control, with power, as noted in Arnstein’s (1969) oft-referred Ladder of Public Participation.