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Landscapes of Property

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Nicholas Blomley
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Abstract

If we want to explore the social dimensions of property, we need to think of it not only historically but also geographically, entailing both practices in and representations of social space. The concept of landscape is a useful bridging device here, given its double meaning as both a material space and as a particular way of seeing space. Landscapes, in both senses, can serve to reify and naturalize dominant property relations but can also serve as spaces of contestation. Such landscapes, however, cannot be disentangled from the places in which they are positioned. I use this framework to make sense of resistance to gentrification in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, Canada, a poor neighborhood with a rich history of activism. A collective property claim by the poor has been staked out through the material use, production, and representation of an urban landscape. Such local meanings and practices, however, are threatened by “outsiders,” who are seen to map and use this landscape in very different ways.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , 1998 , pp. 567 - 612
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 by The Law and Society Association

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Footnotes

I would like to thank Jeff Sommers, Eric Clark, Neil Smith and John Shayler for their comments on an earlier draft. This article has been in process for a long time; several reviewers, on two occasions, made invaluable criticisms. Versions of the article were presented at a workshop on New Forms of Governance: Theory, Research and Practice, held at the Centre of Criminology, University of Toronto, 24-24 October 1996, and at a seminar at the Department of Geography, University of Washington: I appreciate comments made at both places. Thanks also to the insightful comments of Bill Pake, Adrienne Burk, and Cameron Muir, participants in my graduate seminar on Law, Space and the City. My research was made possible by a SSHRC grant (401-94-1734).

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