How can urban housing, and the land underneath, now account for half of all global wealth? According to Patrick Condon, the simple answer is that land has become an asset rather than a utility. If the rich only indulged themselves with gold, jewels, and art, we wouldn’t have a global housing crisis. But once global capital markets realized land was a good speculative investment, runaway housing costs ensued. In just one city, Vancouver, land prices increased by 600 percent between 2008 and 2016. How much wealth have investors extracted from urban land? In this engaging, readable, and clearly reasoned treatise, Patrick Condon explains how we have let land, our most durable resource, shift away from the common good – and proposes bold strategies that cities in North America could use to shift it back.

Patrick Condon's profile page

Patrick M. Condon is a professional city planner, teacher, and researcher with over forty years of experience in sustainable urban design. Patrick has taught in the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of British Columbia since 1992. He is the author of three previous books, including Seven Rules for Sustainable Communities and Five Rules for Tomorrow’s Cities.

A pioneer of public engagement, Patrick understands collaboration as a fundamental part of designing sustainable communities. He has successfully focused attention on strategies for inspiring systemic change in city-building and operations, notably in the East Clayton project in Surrey, British Columbia. More recently, he and his research partners collaborated with the City of North Vancouver to produce a 100-year plan to make the city carbon-neutral by 2107. Patrick and his partners’ work received the Canadian Institute of Planners Award for Planning Excellence and the BC Union of Municipalities Award of Excellence. Patrick Condon lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.