The Market to Roam: Using Sharing Economy Platforms for Expanding Roaming Access to Land Resources

Abstract

This Article proposes a framework for a market to roam, where technology-facilitated bargaining leads to transfers of roaming rights and the provision of access across private lands. Such a system can borrow from what we know about traditional land use cooperation platforms, together with what we are learning from the sharing economy and its use of technology platforms to assist with matching owners of under-utilized resources with individuals interested in accessing or using those resources. The Article engages with property law debates over the capability of the property system to support subdivision of rights, or sticks, in the property rights bundle. New sharing economy mechanisms are demonstrating just how such technologies can make transactions in subdivided property bundles more accessible to owners and users of property. Expanded access to interact with ecological resources while roaming on private lands could be obtained through strong exclusion rights facilitated by innovative technologies and organizational models that help foster greater inclusion through easy and accountable access rights. The Article concludes that an exclusion rights-based market to roam is superior for achieving the ecological and other ends progressive property scholars seek when advocating for mandatory access and free roaming rights.

Keywords: Market to Roam, Roaming Rights, Right to Roam, Land Access, Right to Exclude, Right to Include, Technology and Property Rights, Numerus Clausus, Sharing Economy, Hiking, Hunting, Collaborative Access Economy