'Neighbourhoods that Work' and the Walden Wage : how access to land plus a participation income could change the world

In this chapter we have argued that without a new land opportunity that would free people from a lifetime of participation in an unsustainable Ecological Economics: Solutions for the Future - 182 market economy, we are socially, politically and economically constrained from achieving low-impact lifestyles consistent with planetary limits. We believe that experiments with ways to broaden access to land are indispensable to any degrowth transition, and since degrowth in some form is necessary to the ongoing inhabitability of Earth, we maintain that land access ought to be given far more attention by all those seriously concerned about sustainability, social and ecological justice, and the flourishing of the community of life on Earth. We believe it is time to experiment with alternative frameworks that can increase access to land for housing. This would empower more people to explore lifestyles of reduced consumption, increased self-sufficiency, and local economic collaboration, thereby enabling a prefigurative degrowth transition to a steady-state economy and reducing pressure on planetary ecosystems. Our vision is that if people are provided with affordable rent through public land and housing opportunities to undertake their own sufficiency-based living experiments like Henry Thoreau, then many people would do so. Access to land liberates people from market growth and facilitates ways of living consistent with genuine sustainability. At the very least, it makes sense to support all willing pioneers and encourage their skill development and empower them to build new worlds within the shell of the old (Trainer 2010; Holmgren 2018). As Buckminster Fuller (BFI n.d.) once said: 'You never change things by fighting against the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete.'