There are many urban and rural initiatives in Germany concerned with the protection, preservation and regeneration of soil. These groups are also concerned with the equitable distribution of land (including housing) and are working on problem analysis and progressive and radical reforms to promote soil protection, access to land, and its ecological management and use. However, they rarely meet to discuss these issues in a comprehensive way that considers rural, urban and suburban spaces together.
In November 2023, we held a workshop at THE NEW INSTITUTE to develop strategies for a movement for social and ecological land justice that constructively addresses the urban-rural divide.

Many of the obstacles to just and social-ecological land policies – such as displacement, intransparent ownership structures, land concentration, the sealing of soil, and the assetizationand financialization of land – are interrelated in urban and rural settings. Similarly, instruments and initiatives to address these obstacles span the rural-urban divide, such as institutional designs that seek to promote collective ownership of land and protect against its re-privatization.
In the workshop, we sought to enable exchange between these initiatives and activists on joint strategies and on how to collaborate and coordinate transformation projects.

Land and housing activists met with researchers, administrators, policymakers and lawyers to discuss options for action and collaboration in pursuit of just and transformative land and soil policies.

The workshop addressed the following themes and questions:

1. Parallels between urban and rural political economies of land: Which parallels exist? What are similar problems and approaches to tackle them?
2. What success stories can we tell to support both urban and rural land struggles?
3. What were moments of failure? What do we learn from them?
4. Which fault lines divide movements for urban and rural land justice and how can they be overcome; when and how are the two played off against each other?
5. International success stories and real dystopias: What land policy approaches can be imported to Germany from abroad in both urban and rural contexts? Which practical examples should not be replicated?
6. Temporal comparison - historical references: Which historical lessons can be drawn from past land and soil reform projects? Does this historical knowledge help and can it be used as a basis for political action?

The participants worked in groups concerning the following topics:

1. Databases and infrastructures on land distribution and use
   Enabling transparent transformation
2. Court action and land policy
   Strategic litigation
3. Alternative structures and procedures for socio-ecological transformation
   Legal hacking and the struggle for new legal forms
   Socialization and commons
   Procurement procedures and contracts
4. Transformation of property and financialization
   Revolutionary realpolitik
   Soil is neither a weapon nor a commodity
5. Ecology and soil policy
   Land use conflicts and soil protection

A publication documenting the results of the workshop and identifying tools and pathways for a sociological transformation of land tenure and use is currently being prepared. It will be published in the fall of 2024.