ABSTRACT
What is the appeal of the community land trust, a legal device to create a communal ownership structure, to urban designers and architects? Why is this legal structure of writing bylaws and creating contractual agreements between local stakeholders something exciting and potentially radical? Although still rooted in the principle of land ownership, the community land trust provides one such opportunity to explore the future of collective use and a process of participation where design can become part of a toolkit of commoning.
In this chapter, I will examine my engagement with two separate community land trusts in New York City that have enlisted my services as an architect to imagine a future for two city-owned buildings to be transformed into community facilities. These works are pilot projects for the community land trusts that emerged from local activist groups combating corporate land grabs in former industrial waterfront sites. The design task here was to imagine community ownership and create a vision for the occupation of these sites while acknowledging the counter-institutional activism at the root of forming this type of community.
