Rescaling City Property

Contemporary cities are a site of multiple cross-border activities, from the inward and outward movement of goods, capital, services, and persons, up to the constant flow of digital data. However, the current legal landscape concerning the power of cities to govern non-residents is deficient. The nation-state’s continuing dominance, both in the domestic division of power, and in the international arena, often results in a mismatch with the physical and digital reality of current cities. Even though cities are acting practically beyond territorial and resident-based boundaries, a formal overhaul in city-state-international governance powers is unlikely soon. This Article argues that many aspects of the governance gap embedded in the cross-border nature of urban life can be addressed through a reconsideration of the role of cities’ property rights in assets, both tangible and intangible. Cities face growing pressure on physical assets that are consumed by both residents and non-residents, often with little power to ensure that those who use such assets will internalize the costs involved. This may call for reconsidering the tenets of cities’ property rights in governing these assets. At the same time, cities - especially “smart cities” - are increasingly accruing a new type of valuable asset: aggregated data about everyday actions of residents and non-residents, such as their movement patterns across the city. While cities must account for concerns over privacy, mostly by ensuring that data is anonymized, it may make sense to allow cities to make use of and monetize such data, under certain constraints. The normative case for allowing cities to exert their property rights in assets in a differential and creative manner to account for their current cross-border reality is particularly strong when cities remain otherwise committed to promoting intra-local and inter-local openness, diversity, and tolerance. Much of the concern about parochialism derives from exclusionary practices of suburbs or private communities. Cities are - and should be - different. Allowing cities to harness property rights may aid them in addressing their mounting challenges while remaining open and accessible