Beyond the blinders: Disclosing the episteme of land ownership to re-frame legal and economic values in planning

Abstract

Among the values conceptualising and measuring planning processes and outcomes, two play a prominent role in liberal democracies: legal and economic. Current conceptions and practices framing these values face substantial challenges: civil law systems do not account for the variety of land use situations, increases in wealth inequalities, and human activities which threaten planetary boundaries. A way to tackle these challenges is to analyse the current theoretical discourse and legal norms framing values in planning, study alternative conceptions, and outline new responses. The present article investigates how a paradigm shift in planning theory may open new avenues for conceptualising legal and economic values. To do so, it first compares the episteme of land ownership defined by two theories applied to planning: law-and-economics and land master theory. Second, drawing upon the comparison, the article discusses how the strengths of each theory may contribute to filling the gaps of the others. Identified gaps are: the integration of political aspects into the analysis, the conceptualization of collective and use-specific forms of ownership, and methodological issues. These gaps mirror the western legal conception of land ownership, defined as individual and absolute. Fourth, based on collective and use-specific land management practices that develop within the western legal framework, and theoretical inputs from land master theory, the article puts forward a transduction of legal norms that foster a more sustainable conception of land ownership, known as land stewardship.