A Resilient Future - Pt 1: Community Resilience in Existing Towns
There’s a lot of work to be done as we build the systems that will allow us to move forth into a new era of our human story. Where will this story unfold?
It’s undoubtedly appealing to envision building resilient communities of our future. Beautiful new communities rooted in ecological principles and built from the ground up with permaculture, regenerative agriculture, renewable energy, natural healthy homes, local crypto economics and web3 governance. However, there’s plenty of middle ground to cover between a complete manifestation of that vision and where we’re starting.
Existing communities around the world can benefit from individual components of what will be included in the new villages we envision. ReCommon innovates on the CLT model in a way uniquely suited to support both the strengthening of existing communities and the building of new ones. Our model of land tenure is designed to scale to accommodate communities large and small, new and old.
What is a resilient community and how does land tenure set the stage?
All existing communities can benefit from the reclamation of land for stewardship, regeneration, and sustainable use. A community that reclaims land for the commons sets the stage for moving beyond sustainability and into ecological regeneration and climate resilience. Land ownership affects everything - our food systems, water quality, affordable housing, local economics and more. Depending on who owns the land and what their intentions are, forests can be protected or razed to the ground, soil can be destroyed or built up, and housing can be a toxic soulless box or a nurturing, connected home.
The Old Story: Local Resources Under Current Land Use Models
We’ve all experienced the negative consequences of private, for-profit exploitation of valuable local resources. Here are a few examples of how that looks.
The Aged Out Farmer
An aging farmer with 1000 acres right outside of town is ready to retire. He would hand off the land to one of his kids, but none of them are interested in farming. Because of development in the surrounding area, the value of his farmland is quite high, too high for an aspiring young farmer to purchase. So instead he sells his farmland to the highest bidder, which is a development company that puts in a shopping centre. Now the community has a Best Buy and an In-N-Out Burger, but that valuable farmland is gone and never to return. Fresh food now has to be imported to feed the community.
Your New Tech Company Neighbor
A beautiful small village enjoys a quiet, rural existence when Facebook decides to open an office in the nearby small city. It doesn’t take long for housing prices to skyrocket when tech outsiders buy up all the available real estate for themselves and to rent out on AirBnB for some side income. All of a sudden, the locals can no longer afford to live in that small village. Those that weren’t lucky enough to buy their own home before this growth are forced to rent at high rates or straight up leave town to find somewhere more affordable.
Mom and Pops to Corporate Shops
The downtown main street area of a quaint coastal town has a couple of key business locations. Unfortunately, interest in the area has increased and so have the property values. Now, those businesses locations on main street are too expensive for local entrepreneurs because the property owner jacked up the rent. Only corporate chains can now afford to rent that business location and risk operating at a loss, but they see people moving to that area and jump on the opportunity. Now, instead of local businesses existing downtown and keeping money circulating in the local economy, people have the option to shop at Billabong, get a drink at Starbucks, and bank at Wells Fargo, all extracting from the community.
The New Story: Local Resources Under Community Ownership
ReCommon empowers local communities to form their own Bioregional Node and acquire these valuable land assets. By doing so, they can make their community more resilient by ensuring that the land assets are stewarded by the members of the community, for the benefit of the community, in perpetuity. ReCommon provides the localism tools and resources needed to establish proper management and a comprehensive plan for said asset that is customized to the needs of that specific place-based community.
Returning to the examples used earlier, we can see how this fundamental shift in ‘who owns the land’ changes everything. So what does community resilience look like in this new story?
A Farm for Ages
The local Bioregional Node connects with the aging farmer to talk about his goals. They discover that there is mutual interest in keeping that farmland a productive agricultural asset to lock-in some food security for the local community. He doesn’t actually want to sell the land to a developer that will turn it into a shopping center… he just didn’t think there was another option. The Bioregional Node establishes the acquisition of this farmland as an initiative to support, and the members of ReCommon vote to acquire the farm. Ownership of that farmland now belongs to the members of that particular Bioregional Node, which ensures that the farmland will always be used productively, regeneratively, and ecologically. On top of that, it is now more accessible for the ambitious young farmer to access, because the right to use the land is conveyed to him through a long-term leasehold instead of having to come up with the funds to purchase it. When the time comes for that farmer to move on, the Bioregional Node remains in-place as the foundational stewardship layer to ensure that the next farmer has the same affordable access to the land, the farming that happens is ecologically sound, and food continues to flow into the community in perpetuity.
Community Members for the Future
The local community sees housing prices begin to increase and works with ReCommon to form their own Bioregional Node. They form an initiative to acquire some houses for sale before outsiders do and the prices go up ever farther. The initiative is supported by the members of ReCommon and the land and home are purchased. By doing so, there is now a mechanism in place to ensure that those houses stay occupied by locals instead of being turned into an AirBnB. The use of the land and the occupancy of the home is conveyed to a family through a 99-year renewable lease, so they can keep the home in the family and pass it down from generation to generation. That said, if they do want to sell the home and get out of their land lease, there is a resale formula in place to ensure that when it is sold, the price remains fair and affordable for the next family to live there. Improvements made to the land and the house are factored into the equation when the value is appraised, as are the market conditions, but the Bioregional Node ensures that the cost of the home and terms of the leasehold always remain fair and transparent.
Local Business for Local People
Members of the coastal community form a Bioregional Node to counteract the threat they see of business locations getting taken over by outside corporations. They form an initiative to acquire those valuable business storefronts on main street before it’s too late. The ReCommon membership resonates with their mission and vote to support the initiative, acquiring those business locations. Now the members of the Bioregional Node community can ensure that those storefronts are used by local businesses only. And because the business is getting a leasehold to use the space instead of needing the capital to buy the building and land themselves, they’re able to start-up much more affordably and sustainably. If that business then decides to move on or shut down, the local community members of the Bioregional Node are there to ensure the leasehold affordably changes to another local business.
A Network of Resilient Communities to Support Each Other
Of course, all this requires capital investment, which is where the distributed structure of ReCommon and the RegenCLT model of land tenure shines through. Instead of a single isolated community trying to organize from scratch, come up with the funds and apply for grants themselves, they’re able to work directly with ReCommon to achieve their goals more efficiently. ReCommon serves as a central resource of funding support and organizational tools that provides analysis, guidance and support to these communities and ties them into a network of other communities working towards the same goals. The team we’re building at ReCommon is filled with grant writers, land stewards, community managers and others that are ready and able to serve the Bioregional Nodes that form to build resilient communities.
Instead of everyone having to figure it out alone, we can work together to more effectively make change in existing communities. Frankly, we don’t have the time for everyone to figure it out on their own. The RegenCLT is a framework to empower people to start where they are and strengthen the community they’re already living in.
