OWNERSHIP

Ownership rules define how people relate to space and who benefits from space occupancy. Whether it is public or private, an unoccupied building goes through a complex process of planning and decision-making. It determines whether a space should be left empty or be occupied, be designated as public heritage, or be demolished and replaced by a new structure. Different parties are usually involved in deciding about the present and future of a building, and it is not only a matter of legal ownership. In this research, we noticed that he notion of space ownership takes different forms beyond the concept of private property, though these forms may be unrecognized in law. The practice of designing buildings, like architecture for instance, is not a matter of architects and building planners only. It is also given shape by people and communities who inhabit spaces and transform them in different ways. The identities that these people create characterize these buildings, but they remain essentially ‘un-documented’ in regulations and laws and are not given meaning by them. As such, a municipal building like the Notre-Dame library building, which is located in the Saint-Henri borough, belongs to local residents, the same way that the former pavilions of Expo 67 that remain in Parc Jean Drapeau belong to the public.

The concept of ownership invites us the question the tensions between public and private. The fact that a privately-owned building can also be considered as public shows that private ownership does not preclude collective responsibility. Heritage buildings belong to the public and are subject to collective decision-making as much as they are a private property, especially when private owners fail to intervene to preserve them. In these situations, communities and public services are often involved in the maintenance of such sites, though they are not legally recognized for such efforts or acknowledged as their rightful co-owners. Conversely, public buildings can be managed as though they were privately owned. A municipality can dictate the duration of occupation of a public space, choose its users, as well as its purpose. It can hold consultations with architects and citizens to decide how a building can be repurposed after being left vacant for a certain time, but it has no legal obligation to do so. La Cité des Hospitalières and the former bus terminal in Montréal’s Latin quarter are examples of such a process, where the city of Montréal is an important decision-maker. However, negotiations between municipalities, private owners, and citizens on the use of space are subject to uneven power relations that create inequalities decision-making. More often than not, the public is not actively implicated in this process.

In this context, empty and vacant urban sites can offer interesting insights into the tensions that arise between space owners and users as a result of speculation on legal ownership and property rights. As the space needed for new architectural projects becomes increasingly rare, contemporary cities are perceived as lacking space and struggle to expand. At the same time, city users from all cultural, political, and economic backgrounds struggle to find an affordable place to live or work in. Meanwhile, the buildings that are sitting empty are exploited by real-estate speculators to increase the value of urban land. As a result, the urban landscape has turned into a monopoly of a few who own the majority of urban properties, while many citizens and communities remain “property-less”.

These discrepancies between ownership and space usage create sustainability issues for both property owners and tenants in the long run, because they widen inequalities between social and cultural groups in the cities. In some cases, tenants are discriminated against because they do not hold legal title to a space. They are more vulnerable to outside forces, such as rent increases and gentrification. The immaterial value they bring to a space through years of community-building and occupation are not recognized, and can even be erased as property owners decide to evict tenants and repurpose the space in ways that ignore past public heritage. To renters, however, the sense of belonging and attachment they create in a given space is all that matters, and sometimes it is all that is left when their previous homes are demolished or displaced. Though the occupation of a building may be temporary, the identities they foster while occupying this space are the main signifiers of ownership.

Property owners, conversely, are perceived by tenants and local communities as detached from such spaces and from the people they rent their properties to. They are more concerned with the commercial value of land that fluctuates with market tendencies, rarely taking people and heritage into consideration. If they can increase the value of their properties by leaving them empty, they would rather do so. Some real estate investors even consider occupancy as secondary. Vacancy is the primary commodity they seek in order to increase the value of buildings and properties that sit empty. They are less interested in creating monetary value through community-building, than through leaving space unoccupied. In this sense, buildings are viewed as marketable “walls” and “concrete stocks”.

The problem with the desirability for empty spaces is the negative consequences it has on the public, which is a reminder that property owners and real estate developers have a responsibility towards urban collectivities. Empty buildings can present a threat to the public because they can degrade, collapse, and become fire hazards after being left unoccupied for long periods of time. These buildings, then, become a dead weight on municipal structures. Abandoned infrastructures can therefore participate in increasing the feeling of insecurity among residents in some urban areas, and may even lead to the devitalization of neighbourhoods as decrepit structures affect the sensory and visual environment of these areas. Consequently, the right to own property can differ from the right to use it, although both are deeply connected. But more than that, owners and users of space depend on one another when it comes to using and deciding the future of a space.

If property owners have an influence on citizens’ use of space and how they relate to it, the opposite is also true. Tenants, such as artists, students, and community organizations can increase the value of a space by creating a long-lasting sense of belonging and inclusiveness. Through unique design and organization of space, they are able to foster spaces of collective solidarity that connect different communities. This, in turn, has a positive impact on the social fabric of neighbourhoods and urban economies as it attracts other people to visit, spend money, and network with one another. At the scale of individual properties, owners, too, benefit from this activation of space.

This is why transitory urban projects are attractive to many contemporary cities: they essentially negotiate a middle ground between the use of empty spaces and permanent legal ownerships, where the social value created through supporting local communities is allowed to flourish, while letting real estate market dynamics run their course. Although the use of a space, its appropriation, and transformation does not grant its legal ownership, these projects stimulate the need to develop strategies for collective and communal space claiming. They allow communities to make numerous spatial arrangements possible and challenge individualist understandings of ownership. Ultimately, appropriating a space without owning it through co-directed urban projects, like transitory urbanism, pushes the boundaries of how people inhabit the city and how they redefine the concepts of ownership and property. It shows that the search for permanence in occupying space is possible. But what does this mean with regards to existing property laws? Should ownership be transferred to those who occupy a space? Should individual property rights be made collective?

Nonetheless, Law still dictates, to a large extent, who has access to space and who does not. The concept of legal ownership that is practiced in North American cities like Montréal has deep historical ties to settler colonialism and capitalism that led to the dispossession of Indigenous nations and cultures since contact. This research made us reflect deeply on the origins of ownership titles in cities, which lie in the proclamation of Indigenous land as empty and the replacement of Indigenous-based notions of space use, such as the two-row wampum treaty, by colonial ones. This is how ownership and property rights became the main signifiers of land use, which justified the expropriation of Indigenous nations and allowed the settlement of European and non-European newcomers. Today, the colonial origins of property law are hard to shake off, though cities have evolved and regulations on ownership and space use have changed. Eurocentric notions of property are still firmly rooted in the urban landscape, and take contemporary forms. The fact that urban Indigenous people, racialized immigrants, and low-income communities find difficulties to access and use space in the city today speaks to the coloniality that created these cities and the inequality that exists between owners and space dwellers today. Expropriations and evictions continue to be part of current urban design, despite efforts of architects, community advocates, and some municipal representatives to limit the exclusionary effects of regulations and ownership rights.

This reality invites us to question whether the concept of ownership is in any way adequate in defining our relationship to space, due to its constrictive and exclusionary nature. Should it be replaced by alternative visions of space use? Should we turn to Indigenous notions of relational use of space instead, and decolonize the urban experience of space-making? The night sky, for instance, invites scientists (and stargazers alike) to ask questions about the unknown, push the boundaries of curiosity, and attempt to understand their positionality in the universe. The space above our heads is a launching site for projects and ideas that attempt to locate ourselves as societies. It is recognized as a democratic space that cannot be owned solely by scientists or astrophysicists, because it belongs to humanity and living creatures as a whole. Can’t we say the same about the land we stand on - without which our explorations of space would not be possible? The land grounds us, and because of that, it allows us to embody human existence in very interesting ways. Because of that, it cannot belong solely to architects, municipalities, and private property owners, as it is essentially a rooting site for many communities and individuals.

In the end, empty spaces present us with a possibility to re-define the boundaries that were previously drawn by regulations on the land. They allow us to break and make up new rules that represent us as people in these spaces, and that authorize the coexistence of multiple groups of people in one space. Allowing us to think outside the usual constraints, these authorizing spaces make room for essential processes of reparation vis-à-vis the communities that were affected by colonialism and capitalistic dispossession.