9 Subjecting land to an official reallocation (remembrement) procedure, when
holdings become minutely parcelled or held in multiple ownership – again
generally unworkable, but a logical way to set serious ‘wrongs’ ‘right’.
10 Protection Orders applied to the ‘natural’ heritage or the ‘cultural heritage’.
Despite its length and complexity, the above list of essentially corporeal con-
straints over private property ownerships and resource uses does not include con-
trols for protecting the ancestral interests and spiritual entitlements of indigenous
peoples – or, indeed, the feral rights of indigenous flora and fauna.
Hofstee (1967) observed wisely if densely: ‘that the rules a man
[sic] has to obey, when he wants to establish continue or break a
certain formal bond between himself and the land, without
getting into conflict with his fellow men and the existing politi-
cal powers, do not exist independently, but are related to society
as a whole.’ From this position he concluded: First, that the
concept of private property is ‘not the natural or self evident form
of land ownership’, challenging freehold land title systems which
allow of ‘ownership from the centre of the earth to the sky’ as an ephemeral
buyable-sellable-tradeable commodity. Second, he considered that ‘private prop-
erty in land as a system has already weakened’ even though it is the cornerstone
to all landowning democracies. Third, Hofstee concluded that in principle ‘plan-
ning is considered as a legitimate action of the government, for which no com-
pensation is due’. These three precepts collate as the basis of resource management
- identifying and coding public interests and entitlements.
Freeholder rights, so absolute in frontier times, can be codified and constrained
by law, less effectively through covenants, by Landcare preference, and (relative
to the all-important tourism industry) through an embellishment of community
values and interests via conservation covenants. These latter involve the fashion-
ing of voluntary agreements to protect natural landscapes against all future devel-
opmentandthe enhancement and conservation of native flora and fauna in
perpetuity.
The right to develop, exploit or conserve a landholding is regulated under plan-
ning and resource management statutes, conservancy laws, heritage statutes,
mining and water-use controls, waste management strictures, and controls for
downstream and downwind pollutions. Although of mainly theoretical interest it
is helpful for practioners to contemplate the underlying systemic basis of plan-
ning control. What follows is a potted collation. - Administrations in the poorer ‘developing economies’ do not have the benefit
of much in the way of a system-basis to enforce development and conservancy
rulings. Applying for approval to develop may arise as a formality, although
obtaining an actual approval to proceed usually involves the engagement of
agents and the payment of supplementary ‘sweeteners’ to third parties.^18 - In ‘command economies’ the state owns all development rights. What the state
decrees is absolute, which occasionally works well for the likes of macro-
conservancy, but inevitably leads to on-site failures and shortfalls.
Growth Pattern Management 155Hofstee, a Hollander,
alluded to the
compromised degree of
remnant land possession
and enjoyment of so-
styled Dutch
‘landowners’ and their
‘landownership’.