Among the most innovative provisions of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) of 1976 were those called for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM)to designate public lands as “areas of critical environmental concern” (ACECs) for protective management. In fact, FLPMA made it quite...

Property rights are powerful. They fundamentally shape both the physical world and our social relations within it. Property choices impact how land and other resources are used (or conserved) and who has access to those resources (or who is excluded). At the same time, cultural discourses about...

In this time of rapid climate change and gaping inequality, we face urgent questions about the ability of current property systems to sustain us into the future. But how does property-system change happen? Land reform is difficult to imagine, much less implement, within a physical landscape...

Pacific salmon, the signature species of the Pacific Northwest, have declined across their range for well over a century, due to a myriad of human-caused effects on their habitat and the fish themselves. Restoration efforts—some successful, some halting—began earnest in the late 20th...

This forthcoming piece of legal scholarship analyzes the specific ways in which modern property rules are transforming land into an asset class to be monetized, capitalized, and exploited. In fundamental ways, our collective property choices about land calibrate our relationship to physical...

Big box stores, the defining retail shopping location for the majority of American suburbs, are being abandoned at alarming rates, due in part to the economic downturn. These empty stores impose numerous negative externalities on the communities in which they are located, including blight,...

The essence of a conservation easement as a static perpetual restriction is coming to a head with the understanding that the world is a changing place. This demonstration is nowhere more dramatic than in the context of global climate change. In response to this conflict, users of conservation...

Instagram pictures of elegantly plated dinners, long farm-style tables, and well-to-do people laughing in what looks like a loft apartment are followed by commenters asking, “Where is this?” This is the world of underground dining. Aspiring and established chefs invite strangers into their...

The aim of the present paper is to examine the existence and patterns of systematic within-country inequalities in effective land rights in Rwanda. The results of empirical estimations drawing on data on the land tenure arrangements of over 5,000 Rwandan households indeed suggest systematic...

This paper develops a model of land title reform which shows that a policy of voluntary adoption of a new system is not likely to be successful, even if the new system Pareto dominates the existing one. The problem is the existence of an externality that prevents individual landowners from fully...