Collaborative Research: The Scale of Governance in the Regulation of Land: Community Land Trusts in the Twin Cities

This research examines relationships between individuals and institutions, including multiple levels of government, with regard to land and property through an exploration of Community Land Trusts (“CLTs”) in the Twin Cities region of Minnesota. CLTs are private, not-for-profit organizations which own residential land in trust for a community defined by membership and geographical boundaries at varying scales, from the sub-neighborhood to the urban region. They offer long-term renewable leases for the use of that land to members, who in turn own the homes built on that land. Using voluntary, contractual mechanisms that are compatible with existing legal frameworks, CLTs disrupt the often taken-for-granted direct relationship between individual landowners (whether corporations or citizens), their properties, and regulatory agencies / governments. CLTs offer an institutional structure that allows individuals to “opt out” of certain parts of the land market–reconfiguring the homeowner relationship to property and governments–in exchange for a long-term commitment to participate in an organization which owns and thus possesses many controlling rights to the use of the land around and under individual homes. By examining the legal and social dimensions of CLT-governed common property in a major metropolitan area, the research highlights how the meanings of community and property can be negotiated through public and private institutions at multiple scales. Through a combination of archival research, semi-structured interviews and roving interviews, this research explores the following question: What are the relationships between the geographic scale of a Community Land Trust, its engagements in regional land governance (including interactions with other non-profit and government agencies), and its geographical identity?