The built environment is not neutral. It is produced through systems–racial capitalism, wealth extraction, and predatory speculation–that create spatial conditions of disinvestment and dispossession. What does it take to build a counterproject to status-quo development? This seminar examines the foundational logic of land ownership in the U.S. and the role ownership has played in shaping both historic and contemporary notions of the “American Dream.” It explores who benefits from these systems, who is excluded, and how the built environment reflects and reproduces broader structures of domination. The seminar also investigates whether emerging models of community-owned real estate can democratize ownership and governance in ways that counter capital-driven development.

The seminar is organized around four modules. Module 1 covers the ideological and historical foundations of community ownership, tracing how financialization and speculative development produce displacement and dispossession, and how counter-movements have responded. Module 2 introduces the current inventory of community-ownership vehicles, including community land trusts, limited-equity cooperatives, social housing, community investment vehicles, and perpetual purpose trusts. It compares these models across legal structure, governance, financial architecture, operational strategy, and intended social outcomes, while examining the conditions under which they succeed, falter, or risk co-optation. Module 3 follows the full arc of community-owned real estate development: site acquisition, feasibility analysis, capital stack formation, design and construction, operations, and long-term stewardship. Particular attention is paid to the tensions that arise when the developer is also the community. Module 4 asks what it would take for community ownership to function not as a niche intervention but as a structural alternative to status-quo development. It examines the policy environments, financing ecosystems, and political conditions needed for these models to scale, federate, and replicate across geographies.

Ultimately, the seminar evaluates the real potential and limitations of community-owned real estate as a viable alternative to capitalist development–one that redistributes power through ownership while expanding the imaginative and material possibilities for just urban futures. Course format will include lectures by instructors and invited guests, as well as student-led discussions and presentations. Assignments will combine individual and small-team work to produce praxis-oriented materials useful to practitioners, organizers, policymakers, and communities pursuing alternatives to speculative development. With student consent, select work may be compiled into a published volume contributing to the field.