ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the marginalized links between property and community and analyzes the reasons why property, in particular property diversity, is relevant to community. It examines property and geography scholarship to describe the complex meanings of community. The chapter outlines legal theories that variously 'explain and evaluate the interaction between property and community'. The consequences of community's marginalization are existential and normative. Community's existential dilemma has negative implications for its self-definition as a legal concept. Some liberal theories acknowledge a conception of community, albeit as a mere or inadvertent consequence of individual choice or welfare maximization. Gregory Alexander and Eduardo Penalver identify utilitarianism and contractarianism as liberal theories with limited community resonance. The perspective on property and community is provided by the study of implications of community norms on property. Alexander's 'sorely under-theorized' social-obligation norm depends on a commitment to human flourishing within viable communities, places where an individual's capacity to become fully socialized and live well-lived lives is enabled.
