The Community Aspect of Private Ownership

This Article advances a new understanding of property rights by introducing the concept of the community aspect of private ownership. Unlike traditional accounts, which assign property rights to the individual owner alone, this Article argues that property rights should be conceived as held by the individual owner in partnership with her immediate community. The neighborhood within which a residential property is located holds a limited interest in that property. The Article reaches this conclusion following a discerning reading of the prevalent theories of property law. As they have so far mostly failed to acknowledge this community aspect of ownership, writers in these diverse traditions have not been able to provide a conceptualization of ownership that will correspond to their theories' own premises. Through the prism of the community aspect of ownership, this Article thus provides not only a more accurate notion of ownership, but also a better view of the contending philosophies of property. In addition, this Article suggests a legal reform that will promote the community aspect of ownership by stabilizing neighborhoods experiencing rapid change in the form of either abandonment or gentrification. Finally, this Article examines the ways in which its proposed community-invested idea of ownership can be applied to problems in other fields of property, torts, and intellectual property law.