John Emmeus Davis

John Emmeus Davis is a city planner whose scholarly writing and professional practice has focused for 40 years on community land trusts, limited equity cooperatives, and other forms of privately owned, permanently affordable housing. He is a co-director of the Center for Community Land Trust Innovation and editor-in-chief of Terra Nostra Press.

He is an amateur historian as well, who has helped to document various precursors and pioneers of the community land trust. This model of community-led development on community-owned land is rooted in the Gramdan Movement of India, the Garden Cities of England, the cooperative farms of Israel, and the Civil Rights Movement in the American South. He and a colleague maintain an online archive of historical materials named ROOTS & BRANCHES: A GARDENER’S GUIDE TO THE ORIGINS AND EVOLUTION OF THE COMMUNITY LAND. He was also a co-producer of the documentary film, entitled ARC OF JUSTICE: THE RISE, FALL AND REBIRTH OF A BELOVED COMMUNITY.

Davis is a founding partner of Burlington Associates in Community Development, a national consulting cooperative in the USA. He holds an MS and PhD from Cornell University and has taught housing policy and neighborhood planning at New Hampshire College, the University of Vermont, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He lives in Burlington, Vermont, where he served for ten years as the city's housing director under Mayors Bernie Sanders and Peter Clavelle. More information on his background, career, and publications can be found at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Emmeus_Davis