Collective Property Rights and Social Citizenship: Recent Trends in Urban Latin America

Abstract

This article argues that efforts to implement collective property ownership via community land trusts (CLTs) in Latin America can be seen as a viable means for reducing socio-spatial inequalities, strengthening the urban poor’s ‘right to the city,’ and enabling more substantive social citizenship. It begins by arguing that, in Latin America, market models intended to strengthen individual property rights can increase urban inequality and spatial exclusion. It then examines recent measures undertaken to reverse the negative impacts of these patterns, focusing explicitly on the adoption of CLTs and how they serve as a means for strengthening urban citizenship. After highlighting the fact that CLTs have proliferated in the US and Europe but not Latin America, we explain how and why a few Latin American countries have nonetheless embraced CLTs. Building on deeper analysis of two cases in the region, Puerto Rico and Brazil, we show that despite the legal and governance constraints of Latin American cities, CLTs can materialise when local authorities join with citizens to embrace these models.