Conversation

The United Kingdom is crisscrossed with public footpaths where the public holds a legal right to traverse.

Many of these paths are centuries old. Many of them are probably even older, dating back thousands of years to the Neolithic or older.

They predate virtually every extant property claim that could be leveraged against them. They have belonged in common to the community that uses them since before there was a British state.

And yet, the British state is in the process of handing over thousands of miles of public footpaths to private owners because these paths—older than the state—have not been registered with the state. In James Scott’s terms, they are not *legible* to the state.

But carefully surveyed, delineated, discrete parcels of private property linked to individual owners—the state’s favorite—are legible to the state. So over they go.

Enclosure never really stopped.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/public-access-paths-lost-landowners-lobby-government-therese-coffey-england/