Privates Bodeneigentum und die Stadt als Allmende. Eine wirtschaftsethische Reflexion der Herausforderung schnell steigender urbaner Bodenpreise

Against the backdrop of sharply rising land and housing prices in attractive German cities, intensive debates have been going on for some years about the ownership of urban land. Recently, more and more voices have been heard calling for a “reappropriation of the urban” by reorganizing urban land as common property. In our contribution, we examine the guiding idea of the “city as commons” associated with these demands from the perspective of economic ethics. First, we present the social obligation of private property on the basis of Catholic property ethics and concretize it using the example of the ownership of urban land. From the perspectives of the economic classification of goods and the commons research inspired by the work of Elinor Ostrom, we look at the idea of the “city as commons” and thereon provide an ethical reflection on cities as contexts of cooperation. We justify why these contexts of cooperation have to be protected from too strong economic particular interests and finally present a concise sketch of land policy action