Oscar R Williams
Biographic Data
| ID | 1247284 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Oscar R Williams |
| GIVEN NAMES | Oscar R |
| FAMILY NAME | Williams |
| SIGNATURE | WILLIAMS O R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Florida State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4545-6354 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 84 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1978 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Understanding Differences Between Technocratic and Transformative Community Land Trusts
Community land trusts (CLTs) secure permanently affordable housing and enable community control over urban space. Some CLTs, however, have been criticized for being “technocratic” instead of “transformative.” If some CLTs are systematically more transformative than others, how do the logics and practices they claim to prioritize differ or converge, and to what consequence? Analyzing matched-pair cases of North American CLTs, “transformative” CLTs…
I don't think anybody’s ever been to scale
This paper examines the scalar logics of Community Land Trusts, nonprofits that work to facilitate affordable housing and promote community control of local development. Like many nonprofits, CLTs face a tension between assumed efficiencies that come with larger size on one hand, and the assumed responsiveness to community stakeholders that comes with smaller size on the other. Through an examination of CLTs in Minnesota, USA that included over 1…
Ownership is a habit of mind
Community land trusts (“CLTs”) have garnered attention as a novel, non-state organizational mechanism for enabling permanently affordable homeownership. In canonical form, they separate a home from the land upon which it sits, holding the land in trust and selling the home for its value without the land. Additionally, CLTs use ground lease restrictions to constrain the resale process and enforce long-term reproduction of affordability. Herein, we…
The Commodity Effects of Decommodification
This article explores the impacts of community land trust (CLT) properties on the real estate prices of nearby homes through a case study of a relatively large CLT in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We use hedonic regression and a difference-in-difference estimation with spatial error correction to measure price effects. The number of developments citywide is insufficient to yield significant results. However, we find evidence that clustering CLTs stemme…
Meanings of limited equity homeownership in community land trusts
Discourses regarding homeownership in the United States emphasize housing as an economic investment. This focus fosters a number of problems, including inflated housing values, increased segregation, economic divisions, and the foreclosure crisis. Community land trusts (CLTs) put land in a non-profit trust to keep it affordable long-term. We examine CLTs as affordable housing organizations where individual residents own homes in the trust and lea…
The Production of Community in Community Land Trusts
This paper explores the ways notions of community are produced and understood by homeowners/ members, staff, and board members of eight Community Land Trusts (CLTs) in the state of Minnesota. The CLT model utilizes a mixed property regime that ensures the permanent affordability of land to make it accessible to low–income people. In most cases, CLT land is made up of noncontiguous parcels spread across a neighborhood or municipality, embedded in …
On the Transformative Potential of Community Land Trusts in the United States
Growing interest in non‐capitalist ownership models raises empirical questions about the political implications of such models. In this paper we ask: are non‐capitalist property ownership models inherently politically transformative? A study of community land trusts ( CLT s) based in Minnesota illustrates that alternative property models do not necessarily produce transformative political outcomes. Interviews of those involved in CLT s revealed t…
W(h)ither the community in community land trusts
Community land trusts (CLTs) began as a model for community control over land in the late 1960s. The model allows for individual ownership of improvements to land while the land is owned by the CLT. This effectively removes the land from the speculative market and allows for less marketable uses that might benefit disadvantaged communities. As the CLT model has grown and proliferated, it has evolved over time to become primarily a means to provid…
The spirit of revolution
Against Power? Distinguishing Between Acquisitive Resistance and Subversion
Critiques of contemporary political‐economic formations, while grounded in an array of theoretical traditions, have often centered on strategies for relocating power (as embodied in accumulated wealth, control of labor and corporate entities, or the state) in institutions that are nominally more egalitarian or democratic. Such alternative institutions are intended to better represent those who have been historically harmed by the use of power. Th…
Inserting scales of urban politics
This article explores the geographic literature on governance at smaller-than-urban but larger-than-household scales, identifying a relative inattention to neighborhood and other partial-city scales of governance. Hegemonic power relationships are institutionalized at particular scales of state government (e.g. national, regional, municipal) and state-sanctioned governing units (e.g. jurisdictional districts or supranational bodies), which in tur…
Iterative parallelism as research praxis
Discussions of geography's role outside the academy have tended toward arguments for greater public relevance, either by revising the discipline's empirical foci, or by adopting more public‐oriented or activist approaches to research. While we are sympathetic to these ideas, we see an inherent tension between the discursive goals of academic scholarship and the everyday political world beyond it. Political discourse makes productive use of signif…
Rights in places
Earl Middleton and Joy Barnes, Knowing Who I Am
Gregory Mixon, The Atlanta Riot
The Regimentation of Blacks on the Urban Frontier in Colonial Albany, New York City and Philadelphia
Rights in places
W(h)ither the community in community land trusts
Community land trusts (CLTs) began as a model for community control over land in the late 1960s. The model allows for individual ownership of improvements to land while the land is owned by the CLT. This effectively removes the land from the speculative market and allows for less marketable uses that might benefit disadvantaged communities. As the CLT model has grown and proliferated, it has evolved over time to become primarily a means to provid…
On the Transformative Potential of Community Land Trusts in the United States
Growing interest in non‐capitalist ownership models raises empirical questions about the political implications of such models. In this paper we ask: are non‐capitalist property ownership models inherently politically transformative? A study of community land trusts ( CLT s) based in Minnesota illustrates that alternative property models do not necessarily produce transformative political outcomes. Interviews of those involved in CLT s revealed t…
Against Power? Distinguishing Between Acquisitive Resistance and Subversion
Critiques of contemporary political‐economic formations, while grounded in an array of theoretical traditions, have often centered on strategies for relocating power (as embodied in accumulated wealth, control of labor and corporate entities, or the state) in institutions that are nominally more egalitarian or democratic. Such alternative institutions are intended to better represent those who have been historically harmed by the use of power. Th…
Inserting scales of urban politics
This article explores the geographic literature on governance at smaller-than-urban but larger-than-household scales, identifying a relative inattention to neighborhood and other partial-city scales of governance. Hegemonic power relationships are institutionalized at particular scales of state government (e.g. national, regional, municipal) and state-sanctioned governing units (e.g. jurisdictional districts or supranational bodies), which in tur…
Meanings of limited equity homeownership in community land trusts
Discourses regarding homeownership in the United States emphasize housing as an economic investment. This focus fosters a number of problems, including inflated housing values, increased segregation, economic divisions, and the foreclosure crisis. Community land trusts (CLTs) put land in a non-profit trust to keep it affordable long-term. We examine CLTs as affordable housing organizations where individual residents own homes in the trust and lea…
The spirit of revolution
The Regimentation of Blacks on the Urban Frontier in Colonial Albany, New York City and Philadelphia
The Production of Community in Community Land Trusts
This paper explores the ways notions of community are produced and understood by homeowners/ members, staff, and board members of eight Community Land Trusts (CLTs) in the state of Minnesota. The CLT model utilizes a mixed property regime that ensures the permanent affordability of land to make it accessible to low–income people. In most cases, CLT land is made up of noncontiguous parcels spread across a neighborhood or municipality, embedded in …
Iterative parallelism as research praxis
Discussions of geography's role outside the academy have tended toward arguments for greater public relevance, either by revising the discipline's empirical foci, or by adopting more public‐oriented or activist approaches to research. While we are sympathetic to these ideas, we see an inherent tension between the discursive goals of academic scholarship and the everyday political world beyond it. Political discourse makes productive use of signif…
The Regimentation of Blacks on the Urban Frontier in Colonial Albany, New York City and Philadelphia
Gregory Mixon, The Atlanta Riot
Earl Middleton and Joy Barnes, Knowing Who I Am
The spirit of revolution
Against Power? Distinguishing Between Acquisitive Resistance and Subversion
Critiques of contemporary political‐economic formations, while grounded in an array of theoretical traditions, have often centered on strategies for relocating power (as embodied in accumulated wealth, control of labor and corporate entities, or the state) in institutions that are nominally more egalitarian or democratic. Such alternative institutions are intended to better represent those who have been historically harmed by the use of power. Th…
Inserting scales of urban politics
This article explores the geographic literature on governance at smaller-than-urban but larger-than-household scales, identifying a relative inattention to neighborhood and other partial-city scales of governance. Hegemonic power relationships are institutionalized at particular scales of state government (e.g. national, regional, municipal) and state-sanctioned governing units (e.g. jurisdictional districts or supranational bodies), which in tur…
Iterative parallelism as research praxis
Discussions of geography's role outside the academy have tended toward arguments for greater public relevance, either by revising the discipline's empirical foci, or by adopting more public‐oriented or activist approaches to research. While we are sympathetic to these ideas, we see an inherent tension between the discursive goals of academic scholarship and the everyday political world beyond it. Political discourse makes productive use of signif…
Rights in places
W(h)ither the community in community land trusts
Community land trusts (CLTs) began as a model for community control over land in the late 1960s. The model allows for individual ownership of improvements to land while the land is owned by the CLT. This effectively removes the land from the speculative market and allows for less marketable uses that might benefit disadvantaged communities. As the CLT model has grown and proliferated, it has evolved over time to become primarily a means to provid…
The Production of Community in Community Land Trusts
This paper explores the ways notions of community are produced and understood by homeowners/ members, staff, and board members of eight Community Land Trusts (CLTs) in the state of Minnesota. The CLT model utilizes a mixed property regime that ensures the permanent affordability of land to make it accessible to low–income people. In most cases, CLT land is made up of noncontiguous parcels spread across a neighborhood or municipality, embedded in …
On the Transformative Potential of Community Land Trusts in the United States
Growing interest in non‐capitalist ownership models raises empirical questions about the political implications of such models. In this paper we ask: are non‐capitalist property ownership models inherently politically transformative? A study of community land trusts ( CLT s) based in Minnesota illustrates that alternative property models do not necessarily produce transformative political outcomes. Interviews of those involved in CLT s revealed t…
The Commodity Effects of Decommodification
This article explores the impacts of community land trust (CLT) properties on the real estate prices of nearby homes through a case study of a relatively large CLT in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We use hedonic regression and a difference-in-difference estimation with spatial error correction to measure price effects. The number of developments citywide is insufficient to yield significant results. However, we find evidence that clustering CLTs stemme…
Meanings of limited equity homeownership in community land trusts
Discourses regarding homeownership in the United States emphasize housing as an economic investment. This focus fosters a number of problems, including inflated housing values, increased segregation, economic divisions, and the foreclosure crisis. Community land trusts (CLTs) put land in a non-profit trust to keep it affordable long-term. We examine CLTs as affordable housing organizations where individual residents own homes in the trust and lea…
Ownership is a habit of mind
Community land trusts (“CLTs”) have garnered attention as a novel, non-state organizational mechanism for enabling permanently affordable homeownership. In canonical form, they separate a home from the land upon which it sits, holding the land in trust and selling the home for its value without the land. Additionally, CLTs use ground lease restrictions to constrain the resale process and enforce long-term reproduction of affordability. Herein, we…
I don't think anybody’s ever been to scale
This paper examines the scalar logics of Community Land Trusts, nonprofits that work to facilitate affordable housing and promote community control of local development. Like many nonprofits, CLTs face a tension between assumed efficiencies that come with larger size on one hand, and the assumed responsiveness to community stakeholders that comes with smaller size on the other. Through an examination of CLTs in Minnesota, USA that included over 1…
Understanding Differences Between Technocratic and Transformative Community Land Trusts
Community land trusts (CLTs) secure permanently affordable housing and enable community control over urban space. Some CLTs, however, have been criticized for being “technocratic” instead of “transformative.” If some CLTs are systematically more transformative than others, how do the logics and practices they claim to prioritize differ or converge, and to what consequence? Analyzing matched-pair cases of North American CLTs, “transformative” CLTs…
Sociology (11 works) · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism (10 works) · Political science (9 works) · Law (7 works) · Economics (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Urban Planning and Governance (6 works) · Epistemology (5 works) · Geography (4 works) · History (4 works)