Ep. 66: Nancy von Meyer on Parcels, Permission Systems, and the Future of Land

Lura Forcum and Lauren Hall host We Made This Political live on Substack with Nancy von Meyer, a land records, GIS, and property data systems expert and Pendleton Town Council member, discussing her forthcoming book Parcels: How Property Shapes Geography (co-authored with Jerry Poppendorff). Von Meyer explains parcels as the managed geometry of land and, more importantly, a “permission system” tied to zoning and rights, reflecting how societies govern and define community. The conversation covers historical land division from colonization and Revolutionary War land grants to ribbon farms, Levittowns, railroad checkerboards, and how parcels preserve history even as economies shift, using Detroit, Akron, and Rochester as examples. They address tensions between private property and public impacts, redlining, property taxes funding local services, growth-driven density and infill, data centers and “geocollaboration,” infrastructure feedback loops, and climate-change-driven coastal land loss and relocation, ending with optimism about the next generation and where to find the book at regrid.com/book.

00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro
01:21 What Are Parcels
03:31 Parcels as Permissions
06:34 Property Rights Tensions
11:35 Land as Commerce Taxes
14:12 Why Parcel Shapes Persist
21:00 Updating Zoning and Density
22:55 Detroit Redlining and Decline
27:46 Railroad Checkerboard Legacy
29:06 Land as Memory
29:48 Parcels and Modern Crises
30:59 Sea Level Losses
32:30 Regressive Adaptation Costs
34:22 Housing and Community Ties
36:09 Relocating Towns Inland
37:04 Road Shift Horror Story
41:47 Who Pays for Safety
42:50 Geocollaboration Framework
44:44 Urbanization Strains Old Laws
46:04 Property Rights vs Externalities
48:39 Everything Is Up for Grabs
50:08 Common Law Flexibility
51:18 Redefining Progress
54:42 Optimism and Where to Find