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This chapter explores the state regulation of property, as in the case of zoning or planning regulations, which do not dispossess owners of their land but which may impose large economic losses on some owners of land. It begins with a brief survey of prominent examples from judicial opinions and academic commentary, which provides a basic idea of what work the concept is intended to accomplish and how it is thought to achieve those ends. It then argues that the classic paradigm of average reciprocity of advantage is best understood as arising from a regulation’s having solved a coordination problem, and that the specific conditions necessary for regulatory burdens reliably to provide a genuine reciprocal advantage are likely to be satisfied only infrequently. It concludes that when government regulations burden property owners, the presence of reciprocal advantages benefiting those owners derives its importance, in significant part, not from an illusory potential to make property owners whole but rather from the role that such reciprocity plays in preserving the respect due to civic equals.

This chapter enquires whether title conditions can prohibit a burdened property owner from operating a theatre, a seafood restaurant, a public house, an optician's shop, or even an outpatient surgical and diagnostic centre, that competes with a similar business operated on a benefited property? Can they require a burdened owner to engage in some kind of trade with a benefited proprietor or to construct some facility that will benefit the business interests of the person who owns the benefited property? Many legal systems permit these kinds of arrangements as a matter of contract law — as long as the specific agreement in question is not broad enough to violate some external principal of public, anti-competition law. But the more difficult question — and the one that simmers at the centre of this chapter — is whether such an agreement can ‘run with the land’ and be enforced by and against singular or particular successors of the original parties. In other words, can a title condition that imposes a restraint of trade on the burdened property for the sole purpose of conferring a commercial advantage on the benefited proprietor be treated as property? If the answer to this question is affirmative, then a powerful and perhaps new kind of property interest has emerged in Scottish and Louisiana law, one that tells us something significant about the nature of property law itself in these two mixed jurisdictions.

This chapter examines the impact of the emergence of the regulatory state on property rights in America following World War 2. During this period many regulations went far beyond the traditional health and safety rationale, and placed costly burdens on property owners. These included the drive to secure equal rights for racial minorities, and the campaigns for environmental and consumer protection which generated a host of new laws that further restricted the use of property and economic liberty. Though the Supreme Court continued to vigorously protect interstate markets, they were somewhat less deferential to state laws that infringed on property and contractual rights.

This chapter focuses on issues that arise from loss of housing and eviction in Scotland. Traditionally, if a property owner had debts relating to the property such as repairs to common parts like the roof, a creditor could raise an action of adjudication. This meant that the owner could be forced to sell the property to meet the debts. This has been replaced by the process of land attachment. Not all property owners, however, own their properties outright. They have to borrow to buy the house or flat they live in. This chapter first considers two forms of assistance available to those displaced from their homes: the mortgage to rent scheme and assistance available under the homelessness provisions of the Housing (Scotland) Act 1987. It then examines eviction from rented property, with particular emphasis on security of tenure and grounds of possession with respect to assured tenancies, short assured tenancies, and short Scottish secure tenancies. It also discusses unlawful eviction and harassment of tenants by their landlords.

This chapter examines the history of property rights in America during the revolutionary era from 1765 to 1787. Despite the exaltation of property rights as part of the revolutionary ideology, experience soon demonstrated that state safeguards for property were inadequate. State legislatures repeatedly interfered with the rights of property owners, which included sweeping confiscation and sequestration measures directed against Loyalists and British merchants. By 1787 many political leaders were convinced that only a more energetic national government could sufficiently protect property ownership, regulate commerce, and restore public credit.

Most block clubs were created and cultivated by larger community groups such as the Chicago Urban League. Organizing block clubs was a labor-intensive task. Organizers solicited neighbors to attend meetings and serve as leaders. Some organizations wrote manuals to guide the process. New block clubs established charters, elected officers, set eligibility for membership, and chose their name and boundaries. Participants decided on logistical matters such as meeting schedules and locations, dues structures, and activities. These decisions revealed divisions among neighbors, including racial differences, tensions over class and respectability, between property owners and renters, and over the appropriate role of children. Umbrella organizations hoped to turn leadership over to participating members while still harnessing their support to larger neighborhood purposes. Because block clubs were small, local, volunteer-driven organizations, most lasted only a few years, although some endured for decades.

This chapter focuses on housing regulation in Scotland. Regulation, in the form of limitations on what may be done by property owners, has a long history in relation to property. The old limitations were principally restrictive and did not require property owners to do anything other than abstain from unlawful action. Modern forms of regulation now require owners and landlords to play an active role in meeting certain standards and tests. The chapter first considers the common law basis of tenancy before turning to relevant provisions of the Anti-social Behaviour etc (Scotland) Act 2004 concerning the registration of private landlords on a register of approved landlords as well as exemptions from this requirement; criteria for a ‘fit and proper person’; criminal offences; antisocial behaviour notices; rent income suspension; and management control order. It then examines the regulation of social renting, with particular emphasis on performance assessment of social landlords and the Scottish Social Housing Charter.

This chapter focuses on succession to owner-occupier property in Scotland in relation to the rules developed under the statutory rules constructed and interpreted during the twentieth century. There is a set of rules which recognise not only the rights of property owners to deal with their property as they see fit, but also recognise that the tenants who rent their properties have a stake in that property as well, mainly as a family home. The result has been a fascinating view of the changing notion of what amounts to a ‘family’ over the past century, as well as shifts in the level of rights property owners have enjoyed as compared with those of their tenants. Rights under a residential lease were originally not transmissible on death because of the doctrine of delectus personae. This chapter examines three major separate statutory tenancy regimes with different approaches to succession before turning to a discussion of the modern legal framework on succession and the development of property rights and the concept of ‘home’.

This chapter focuses on White Flint, a 400-acre obsolete commercial strip on Montgomery County's most congested roadway, and some of the important lessons it offers with respect to successful planning politics. The most recent of Montgomery's efforts in planning for mixed-use, transit-oriented activity centers, White Flint was envisioned as the best place to create a model for a new generation of land use policy. The chapter discusses the plan for White Flint, the key issues that needed to be resolved before it could move forward, and the project planners' new approach to zoning. White Flint illustrates the value of careful economic analysis; engagement of major property owners and community groups in making plans; and willingness to abandon old ideas in favor of new ones that fit the circumstances at hand. The case of White Flint also highlights the problems of bureaucratic and political resistance to new ways of financing infrastructure.

Fieldwork was conducted in a Kensington recovery house program referred to as AHAD—an abbreviated reference to the pseudonym “Always Have a Dream”—to explore the internal operations of recovery houses. This chapter explores the making of AHAD by tracking the initial months of operation in Malik's fledgling recovery house. Malik was the self-described owner-director of AHAD. The chapter grounds the utopian visions of recovery entrepreneurs by joining him and his men just as they moved into a previously abandoned row house. It also explores the original partnership and founding members of AHAD, as well as the incessant struggles and forced illegalities associated with recovery house operation. The chapter introduces the players who make the recovery house system work, from the absentee property owner, to the director-manager, the assistant manager, the chore monitor, and the “house watcher.”