We're clearly at a moment where we've started running into real roadblocks as a species—when we need to question some very basic assumptions, perhaps above all about the proper balance between individual and community. This fascinating book offers some very new insights into that question—it will knock some rust off your brain!”
—Bill McKibben, author The End of Nature
“In this provocatively titled exploration of land ownership in the U.S., journalist Lim does an excellent job of showing just how complicated the topic of private property can be...With this timely, perceptive, smart, and immensely important inquiry, Lim proves herself to be a writer to watch.”
—Booklist (starred)
"Audrea Lim’s magnificent, provocative Free the Land illuminates how American ideas about land ownership contribute to social injustice...Lim has been thinking long and deeply about these issues, and her research has taken her to Native reservations, Puerto Rico, crumbling New York City neighborhoods and aspirational communities in Minnesota and Georgia. Her meetings and interviews with people exploring alternative ways of thinking about land ownership make for fascinating reading."
—BookPage (starred)
“Free the Land is an incredible book. Weaving together history, law, and real stories of innovation and resistance, Audrea Lim helps liberate the imagination by reminding us that the status quo of concentrated and profit-driven land ownership isn’t set in stone. This book is a map to other, better ways of living together and sharing the earth that sustains us.”
—Astra Taylor, author of The Age of Insecurity
“Coverage of housing unaffordability and gentrification often skirts the root cause: Land. Audrea Lim’s Free the Land tackles this issue head-on, arguing in clear and capable prose that land possession—and profit—drives inequality and environmental degradation. Free the Land offers a compelling and urgent dispatch from the front lines of those working to decommodify land, reimagine our relationship to the ground we occupy, and build more equitable systems of housing, agriculture, and community.”
—Megan Kimble, author of City Limits
“What a read! Free the Land is an ambitious book done impressively well, which not only gives the reader a fuller understanding of who truly owns the land we live on, but also elucidates the structural forces that have led to that ownership. What makes this book particularly important is its vast tapestry and scale—Lim takes us from medieval Europe to modern day Brooklyn, from Puerto Rico to the Rocky Mountains, to protests in Fort McMurray and Standing Rock—then back again. In these interwoven stories she shows us how land has become an arbiter of wealth and privilege, and more importantly—why that matters. Free the Land is the clarion call we needed in order to rethink how we manage our land, a vital and exciting prospect!”
—Lyndsie Bourgon, author of Tree Thieves, finalist for the Lukas Book Prize
“Free the Land is a magnificent, methodical book that provides fresh insight into one of the central questions of life in North America—who owns this land and who has the right to control it? Audrea Lim grounds her history through narratives that are intimate, fast-moving, and painstakingly reported. In the face of looming crises, Lim offers hard-earned hope for a future where everyone can thrive.”
—Jessica Goudeau, author of After The Last Border, winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize
"In a bold manifesto that dreams big, Lim argues that our country should dare to imagine a colossal transformation: what if our land were publicly owned, shared, and put to use to enrich us all?"
—Boston Globe, "75 Books We're Most Excited to Read this Summer"
"A fascinating look at alternative landownership practices. Recommended for readers interested in economics, the environment, and issues of inequality."
—Library Journal
"Lim is a single-minded and enthusiastic advocate for the common and public ownership of land."
—Kirkus
05/01/2024
Journalist Lim (editor, The World We Need) argues that many issues in the United States—inequality, gentrification, climate change—can be linked to the aim to make landownership profitable. She explores the history of inequitable landownership practices in the country, focusing on farming, urban development, and environmentalism. Her book shows that landownership in the United States is overwhelmingly white and corporate, and people who cannot afford to buy, or are priced out of their neighborhoods as property values rise, are shut out. Lim also looks at alternate models of landownership, such as community land trusts, public lands, and cooperative models, many of which reflect practices from Indigenous peoples and Black communities and are often discounted for racist reasons. She gives examples of these models in practice today and weighs their advantages and disadvantages. Cooperative ownership models, which reflect the interest and desires of the community, are favored by many, although Lim urges that care be taken to avoid replicating inequities. VERDICT A fascinating look at alternative landownership practices. Recommended for readers interested in economics, the environment, and issues of inequality.—Rebekah Kati
2024-02-13
A journalistic account of the impact of private land ownership on the environment and on people’s quality of life.
“America is synonymous with private property,” writes Lim, a Brooklyn-based freelance writer. And, she states more boldly, “the commodification of land is driving many of America’s most intransigent problems.” Historically, Native Americans were dispossessed by European settlers and, later, by the federal government, and former enslaved people were promised and then denied land reparations, condemning them to sharecropping servitude. Today, developers purchase land in low-income and working-class neighborhoods and erect luxury buildings, fueling gentrification and its accompanying high rents and shrinking supply of affordable housing. Lim asserts that the public will be served and the environment protected only when land is publicly owned, such that governments are accountable, or placed in community land trusts. She builds her case on evidence from events in the country’s history and stories of grassroots organizations such as the Indian Creek Community Forest in Oregon; the Somali Bantu Community Association (concerned with farmland security) in Lewiston, Maine; the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative in Roxbury, Massachusetts; and the Northern Farmers of Color Land Trust in Minnesota. Lim’s reports from her journalistic travels through the U.S. and Canada are woven with stories of growing up in Calgary, her family history, and her current life in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. The accounts she presents, though, belie her claim “that land is rarely talked about as a social or economic issue today.” And her assumption that many of America’s intransigent problems are attributable to land ownership and to how the country’s opportunities and resources are distributed would have been more credible if tempered by discussion of their entanglement in matters of race, class, and political ideology.
Lim is a single-minded and enthusiastic advocate for the common and public ownership of land.
