©copyright 2002. Leland G. Stauber. All rights reserved.

Leland G. Stauber 

Four Willows Press

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There is a long history of ideas holding that land should be treated as a public utility and community resource, not a private commodity.

This book is in this tradition; it holds that public ownership of land and, for private uses, its management on long-term leases, can be - under optimum policies - a superior framework for reconciling legitimate private interests with equally legitimate societal interests. In practice, however, optimum policies are often not followed, for a variety of reasons.

This book examines in detail a long record of practical experience in order to identify both potential advantages and potential difficulties of such public leasehold systems of land tenure.

It brings together detailed data and expert views on municipal ownership of land in and near cities, in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Finland; on Provincial, and federal ownership of mineral rights in Canada, with comparisons with the United States; and on experience with public ownership of agricultural land, beyond grazing land, in Saskatchewan and Hawaii.

In addition, it focuses on problems of inner-cities in the United States. It holds that a very large factor in these problems is extreme economic segregation in residential patterns. It traces an underlying connection between residential patterns and the type of land tenure.

This book does not treat systems of land tenure in isolation from the larger economic system and the balance between economic individualism and other values in a nation's political culture; rather, it traces interrelationships among these things.

Finally, this book outlines a specific market - socialist alternative for the corporate sector of modern economies. It is simple in conception, would preserve far-reaching pluralism and decentralization, and the private character of management, and could be implemented on a gradual and experimental basis. A considerable record of international debate on this proposal is included.

Author Bio

     Leland G. Stauber holds a PH.D in Political Science from Harvard University (1964). His work has focused on economic institutions, comparative social and economic policies,  governmental systems, and comparative national development. He was Associate Professor of Political Science at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, from 1971 to 1992. He is currently an independent scholar in comparative politics.

Land Ownership
and the Social System
Leland G. Stauber
Four Willows Press

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