Taking back vacant property

Abstract

Taking back" has long been a rallying call of urban social movements asserting land rights. This call often involves seeking to ward off dispossession by taking possession. Scholars rethinking property beyond the normative "ownership model" have explored the seeming paradoxicality of resisting dispossession through legal forms of possession that reproduce deprivation. In this paper, I consider the possibilities for taking back the concept of possession itself by examining claims to "vacant" property in Philadelphia. I put taking back through a citywide "land bank" in conversation with the taking over of a poor people's movement that occupies government-owned properties as a means of survival and political mobilization. I argue that outside or on the edge of legal recognition, the effort to take back property functions not as an end in itself, but rather as an explicitly political taking on of the notion of possessive ownership. ARTICLE HISTORY

Materials Commons

“…Documenting the efforts of a coalition of community groups in Philadelphia, geographer Elsa Noterman argues "that outside or on the edge of legal recognition, the effort to collectively take back property functions not as an end in itself, but as a political tactic to challenge-or take on-the notion of possessive ownership, recognizing shared (and uneven) precarity as both a lived reality and an organizing principle." 16 More than simply a method for managing vacant properties, collective action serves to galvanize broader social change. Noterman's argument to "take back property" echoes a broader call from geographers Katherine Gibson, Julie Graham, Jenny Cameron, and Stephen Healy who assert that "our economy is the outcome of the decisions we make and the actions we take" and, as such, "individuals and communities across the globe are taking economic matters into their own hands to help create worlds that are socially and environmentally just."…”

Vacancy as Precarious Property in Dublin's Temporary Urbanism Moment

“…Much has been made in the literature of the importance of occupation in the formation of a new insurgent urban politics (Garc ıa-Lamarca 2017) that challenges austerity and privatised property (Roy 2017). Vacant spaces have been seen by social movements and the public more generally as a resource to build the urban commons (Bresnihan and Byrne 2015) or to defend against dispossession (Noterman 2021). But the postcrisis period has also accelerated a range of other, often less politically direct, claims to vacancy, such as temporary urbanism (Madanipour 2018), urban gardening (Corcoran et al 2017), and property guardianship (Ferreri and Dawson 2018).…”

“…The presence of vacancy is a stark reminder of the dispossession rendered by capitalist urbanisation—a literal waste of space at a time when basic needs go chronically unmet. But vacancy is also a resource that can be claimed to refuse and resist dispossession (Noterman 2021). Looked at through the lens of governmental precarisation, the most revealing dimensions of vacancy are not in its political extremes but in the interstice between self‐precarisation and politicisation.…”

Speculating on vacancy

“…In 2014, prompted by grassroots organising concerned about displacement related to fast‐paced development of “vacant” land, Philadelphia became the largest US city to create a municipal land bank to centralise the sale and management of this property. Within this context of intensified real estate market pressures, active community efforts to “take back” and “take over” vacant property (Noterman, 2020), and increasing Big‐data‐informed government administration of vacancy in a city with an estimated 37,000 publicly and privately owned “vacant” lots and buildings (see Figure 1), I consider emergent struggles over mapping (out), and speculating on, the future of these spaces.…”