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Florian Hertweck (ed.)

Architecture on Common Ground

The Question of Land: Positions and Models

How we deal with land has far-reaching implications for architecture and urban development. The last decade has seen a dramatic rise in the privatization of urban land and in speculation. Many European cities that today find themselves under extreme development pressure have virtually no land left to build on. In view of the acute housing shortage, the issue of who owns the land is therefore more relevant than ever: To what extent are we able to treat the land as a common good and guard it from the excesses of capitalism?

After a number of specialist journals have already addressed the land property issue, this book aims to dig deeper by providing a historical overview spanning an arc from Henry George to the present day. Interviews with stakeholders in global models provide insights into the current handling of the issue. The book presents outstanding projects based on either a legal or spatial distribution of land and thus makes a valuable contribution to the current discussion on sustainable land policy.

How we deal with land has far-reaching implications for architecture and urban development. The last decade has seen a dramatic rise in the privatization of urban land and in speculation. Many European cities that today find themselves under extreme development pressure have virtually no land left to build on. In view of the acute housing shortage, the issue of who owns the land is therefore more relevant than ever: To what extent are we able to treat the land as a common good and guard it from the excesses of capitalism?

After a number of specialist journals have already addressed the land property issue, this book aims to dig deeper by providing a historical overview spanning an arc from Henry George to the present day. Interviews with stakeholders in global models provide insights into the current handling of the issue. The book presents outstanding projects based on either a legal or spatial distribution of land and thus makes a valuable contribution to the current discussion on sustainable land policy.

Dieses Buch ist auch auf Deutsch erhältlich

“[...] Common Ground excels in its primary project of ramming home its main point: in order to provide affordable housing for all, we must abolish the current status quo where private landowners reap the profits, as land and property values soar over time.“
– PIN-UP Magazine

Edited by Florian Hertweck

With contributions by Dirk Löhr, Reinier de Graaf, Sylvia Claus, Giovanni la Varra, Franziska Eichstädt-Bohlig, Tanja Herdt, Laura Weissmüller and many more

Design: Thomas Mayfried

14 × 20 cm, 5 ½ × 7 ¾ in

392 pages, 65 illustrations

paperback

2020, 978-3-03778-603-1, English
Urban Development Public Space
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Florian Hertweck

Florian Hertweck is an architect and professor at the University of Luxembourg, where he chairs the Master program Architecture, European Urbanisation, Globalisation. In 2018, together with Andrea Rumpf, he curated the Luxembourg Pavilion for the 12th Architecture Biennale in Venice, for which he co-edited the accompanying Arch+ “The Property Issue. Ground Control and the Commons”. Since 2019, Hertweck is leading, together with Milica Topalovic from ETH Zurich, a consortium of researchers and planners for the development of a territorial design strategy for Greater Geneva 2050. Hertweck’s major publications include Positions on Emancipation. Architecture between Aesthetics and Politics ( 2018), Dialogic City. Berlin wird Berlin (2015), the critical edition of Oswald Mathias Ungers’ and Rem Koolhaas’ The city in the city. Berlin: a Green Archipelago (2013) and, most recently, Architecture on Common Ground (2020).

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