Creating ‘new’ commons for the twenty-first century: innovative legal models for ‘green space’

Christopher Rodgers and Duncan Mackay

Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 2018, vol. 61, issue 5-6, 1051-1069

Abstract: We all need space; unless we have it, we cannot reach that sense of quiet in which whispers of better things come to us gently. (Hill 1883)This article considers legal models for creating new commons as a community resource (‘green space’) in English law. It presents a strategy for creating ‘new’ commons to ‘re-purpose’ land for public recreation and to (re)-connect people and nature. This will require the creation of common rights – a species of private property right – over private land, to facilitate its registration as common land with open public recreational access. The article considers the types of private property right appropriate and necessary to achieve this overriding purpose, and considers the narratives of locality and identity which this model for ‘new commons’ could engender. Victorian philanthropists such as Sir Robert Hunter and Octavia Hill led a defensive response to the ‘old’ enclosure movement. Establishing ‘new commons’ would, by contrast, start to address some of the concerns raised by the ‘new’ enclosure movement, by offering a vision for a model of urban common that can provide spaces for human interaction, interdependence and cooperation from which no one is excluded. This would also contribute to addressing key modern public policy objectives for reconnecting people and nature, and contribute to the development of cultural ecosystem services of the kind envisaged by the UK National Ecosystem Assessment and the Biodiversity 2020 strategy for England.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09640568.2017.1333407 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jenpmg:v:61:y:2018:i:5-6:p:1051-1069

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CJEP20

DOI: 10.1080/09640568.2017.1333407

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Environmental Planning and Management is currently edited by Dr Neil Powe, Dr Ken Willis and George Bill Page

More articles in Journal of Environmental Planning and Management from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().