Roman law fixed dominium as near-absolute individual ownership - a right to use a thing, take its fruits and dispose of it, including land - and held it apart from mere possession or usufruct. In chapter V of the Second Treatise (1689) Locke grounded that right in labour: mixing one's labour with the earth makes it property, subject to the proviso that enough and as good is left for others, a limit he treats as dissolved once money lets value be stored and land accumulated. Blackstone's Commentaries (1766) restated the outcome as sole and despotic dominion. The result is a bundle of powers specific to land: it can be surveyed, subdivided, sold, leased, mortgaged, inherited and taxed independently of who actually uses it.
Once land is alienable and mortgageable, the city becomes a field of subdivision and speculation: plots, deeds, ground rents and building leases are the real instruments of urban form, and any plan must negotiate with hundreds of separate owners. Almost every planning power invented since - expropriation, betterment levies, land readjustment, zoning, ground lease - exists to qualify a right this doctrine made absolute.
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