Land, Commons & Community Land Trusts

At the core of the housing crisis lies the speculative value of land. To secure permanent affordability, a growing movement is fundamentally rethinking how land is owned and stewarded. By decoupling land ownership from the buildings upon it, mechanisms such as Community Land Trusts, ground leases, and anti-speculation covenants remove property from the open market. This ensures that public and community investments benefit future generations rather than being lost to private profit. Across Europe, this shift is gaining momentum, visible in the rapid expansion of the French bail réel solidaire model and municipal land banking strategies where cities hold plots for long-term cooperative use. These commons-oriented governance models treat land not as a commodity for short-term gain, but as a shared resource stewarded for the next century.

Below, you will find a collection of resources exploring these mechanisms in practice, including insights into the expansion of the bail réel solidaire in Nantes and Nice, alongside municipal land strategies from Bielefeld to the Balearic Islands. The page highlights pioneering projects such as Hastings Commons and Can 70, as well as established organisations like the Athens Land Trust and various housing cooperatives actively engaging in land stewardship. Finally, you can discover upcoming sector events, from the launch of the latest State of the Sector Report on European Community Land Trusts to conferences focused on activating spaces for the common good, inviting you to explore how intergenerational land governance is reshaping our neighbourhoods.