Urban Transcripts (Nov 2020)
The community land trust, Stadtbodenstiftung, in Berlin on turning land into commons with Andre Sacharow
Abstract
Stemming from a longstanding tradition of civil rights activism and campaigning, the community land trust movement aims at implementing models of common landownership. Drawing on community organisation and long-term landownership for social purposes, community land trusts try to bring back common ownership as a legal category in land management. Andre Sacharow is the incumbent co-director of the Stadtbodenstiftung – a community land trust in Berlin. With one foot in rent activism, and one foot in learning a new form of co-production between civil society and city administration, Andre currently devotes most of his time to the Stadtbodenstiftung. Whilst pursuing interdisciplinary studies in London with a focus on the city, he participated in the establishment of a community land trust there. Based in Berlin since 2017, he has been involved in the organisation of the Experimentdays 2018, and with the non-profit association id22 as a board member.