Property : The myth that built the world

Author(s): Moore, Rowan (Architecture Critic),
Binding: Paperback,
Date of Publication: 02/11/2023,
Pagination: 336 pages,
Series: N/A,
Imprint: Faber & Faber,
Published By: FABER & FABER ,
Book Classification: Politics & government
Dimensions: 136 x 216 x 28mm
Weight: 356g
ISBN13\EAN\SKU: 9780571350094

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A powerful examination of how property shaped the modern world - and why it now threatens the freedoms and stability it was meant to sustain.

Property carries a great promise: that it will make you rich and set you free. But it is also a weapon, an agent of displacement and exploitation, the currency of kleptocrats and oligarchs. In Britain, it has led to a new class division between those who own and those who don't.

Property is a vivid, far-reaching analysis of our concept of property ownership, from 16th-century enclosures to the present day. It tells powerful stories - of life in the developer-led boomtown of Gurgaon in India, of the struggles to form Black communities in Missouri and Georgia, of a giant experiment in co-operative living in the Bronx, of the impacts of Margaret Thatcher's 'property-owning democracy.' Above all, Property asks how we have come to view our homes as investments - and it offers hope for how things could be better, with reform that might enable the social wealth of property to be returned to society.