Private Urban Land Tenure: Revisiting Anne Haila’s Work on its Nature, Critique, and Alternatives

Abstract

This issue of the American Journal of Economics and Sociology is devoted to scholars whose work is related to the ideas of the late Anne Haila. Her background as an urban theorist led her to the work of Henry George. From that encounter, she came to recognize the neglect of land in most types of economic theory, which emphasize either rational individuals or capital. Standard economic paradigms are utopian because they are disconnected from the world and unable to make accurate predictions. Yet, they dominate how we understand the world. Accordingly, existing politics and policies can be described as porous.Anne Haila perceived Georgist political economy (GPE) as a significant voice of reason, vision, and action. GPE stresses the distinctive role of land in its continuing relation to labor and capital. Henry George paved the way for this line of analysis, but he was vilified, and others following his analysis were dismissed. As a result, many scholars who developed GPE over the years became sensitive to being assigned that label.Anne Haila did not share that reticence to identify herself with Henry George's principles. To understand what gave her a unique