Following a century of rapid growth, the global human
population is predicted to crest and then decline in the coming
generations. Some industrialized countries are already
grappling with the economic and societal consequences of
population loss. Others, including the United States, have
only started to realize that decline might arrive on their
doorsteps far sooner than originally anticipated, a prospect
for which policymakers and legal scholars are presently
unprepared.
Global and national demographic change threaten to
cause far-reaching dislocations, and local municipalities, too,
will be asked to reckon with the aftermath. Yet local
governance in the United States has long followed a
dominant vision of population growth, with decline left
stigmatized as a regional anomaly-as a symptom of crisis
rather than a discrete catalyst for it. The growth gospel
prevents local officials from preparing for decline
preemptively when the resources can still be mustered to
confront shifting demographics and dwindling tax streams.
On the other hand, once a locality enters an era of decline, it
runs headlong into vexing problems of property law.
Underutilized land cannot simply be deleted or removed. It
cannot be exchanged with utilized lands elsewhere in order to
retain density, maintain vibrancy, and consolidate local
infrastructure. As scholars have explored in the context of
climate change, another looming challenge of the coming
century, property law's traditional preference for
intergenerational stability hinders its utility when preparing
for a changing world. Keeping pace requires that the
institution evolve to become more adaptive and dynamic
