Jean-David Gerber

This note was created for the Commoning Beyond Growth Workshop, which took place in Nottingham from June 5 to 7, 2024.

Biography

Associate Professor for Political Urbanism and Sustainable Spatial Development, Institute of Geography, University of Bern, Switzerland (Source)

Research interest

Land use planning:

• Land use planning as a public policy
• Land policy and the role of the property rights in land use planning
• Land as a scarce resource
• Agency and the role of actors' strategies, including issues of empowerment, participation, local governance and conflicts 

Housing policy:

• Housing policy and politics
• Housing as a right vs. housing as a commodity
• Housing cooperatives and other alternative models

Resources and sustainability:

• Constructivist approach to natural resources
• Processes of commodification and decommodification of resources
• Landscape as a resource
• Commons

Large-scale investments ('land grabbing') and regional development

• Large-scale land acquisitions at the meeting point between different scales of regulation
• Legal pluralism
• Local resistance strategies
• Appropriation of the Commons
• Telecoupling