ABSTRACT
In this essay, I consider how we might retrofit property rights to meet modern urban and environmental challenges, which have foundationally rewritten property’s job description. The way forward requires attending to the beneficial services that resources provide, and to the central role of assembly (and reassembly) in generating and sustaining those service streams. To that end, I catalog a repertoire of ‘property moves’ aimed at the moving target of resource optimization. While these moves can be pursued in limited ways within our current property framework, pursuing them in concert at scale requires ownership that is built for ongoing reconfiguration. I examine what such a shift in property rights would entail, and how it might intersect with takings jurisprudence and with our understanding of the social obligations of ownership.
Fennell, Lee Anne, Property Moves: Assembling Service Streams (February 17, 2024), 13 Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Journal (Forthcoming).
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