Derek Nicholls, Cambridge International Land Institute
An Historical Perspective

Synopsis

Patterns of land uses and land prices are constantly changing in readily apparent way. Less visible, but no less important, are constant changes in patterns of land ownership. Changes of ownership mean not only transfers of rights from one person to another, but can lead to changes in the characteristics of the main categories of owner (e.g. private individual, public company, trust, government). Even more fundamentally, with the passage of time there can come about change in the nature of what is owned. A brief -- and inevitably highly selective -- review of history thus considers changes in the constitution of property as well as broad patterns of land ownership and interactions between society and the institutions of property.

Land is held for a reason - or combination of reasons - including the extreme negative case of inability to take steps to dispose of the land. Motives for land holding also change and 'fashions' among landowners come and go. As the second millennium A.D. closes in the United Kingdom, owner-occupation of residential property is higher than ever before, but is renting making a comeback? Why was the lease invented in the first place? Farmland owner-occupation may have peaked a few years earlier and recent trends in farm incomes may bring renewed interest in methods of sharing as well as spreading risk. Does a succession of legal restrictions on farmers' decision making in the pursuit of public policy goals relating to conservation and recreation, for instance, amount to a re-definition of the traditional freehold interest?

In the commercial property sector, headlines and impressions are dominated by the institutions' scramble for an apparently diminishing supply of prime property investments or by large (often multi-national) corporations having regard above all for the impact of their decisions upon shareholders. The rest of the business community has to be content with the left-overs and may find it difficult to match their demand with acceptably priced supply. Was it ever thus? Is it simply that the urban barons have a new identity?

In some parts of the world land ownership is in the throes of dramatic transition - from customary communal to individual tenure forms or from a state collective system with administrative allocation to a privatised ownership and market system. That is not an easy task. Is there any reason to look for smoother or more complete privatisation, say, in China in the 21st Century than was achieved in the United States in the 19th?

Over and around all, local and global economies rise and fall and burgeoning national and international regulations circumscribe ownership decisions. Society's needs and aspirations change. But such pressures and outcomes are not new. Illustrations will be given of comparable 'crises' periods in history and of the ability of land ownership systems to evolve in response to changing social, economic and political circumstances.

One does not have to subscribe to John Locke's view of property as a 'natural right' to recognise the resilience of property as an institution: Benthamite utilitarian arguments will suffice. Property means power, and always will. But it would be a profound mistake to focus on current patterns of land ownership to such an extent as to believe that today's property relationships will apply tomorrow.