Beyond housing: on the role of commoning in the establishment of a Community Land Trust project

Urban commons scholars increasingly present Community Land Trusts (CLTs) as a model to manage ‘housing commons’. The collective property framework and institutional design of CLTs offer an innovative yet strenuous approach to facilitate collective access to affordable housing and urban land for underprivileged groups. Although these scholars emphasise the indispensable role of collective action, i.e. ‘commoning’ in the establishment of urban CLTs and their projects, relatively little attention is paid to its implications and consequences for the groups involved. This paper studies the genesis of the first CLT project on the European mainland through the lens of ‘commoning’. It sheds light both on the role of collective action in the institutional design of Community Land Trust Brussels and on the participatory nature of the development of its first project. This reveals not only the empowering potential of commoning practices, but also the challenges related to scaling up such practices.