Cadastre of the Commons: An Historico-Spatial Materialist Overview of Metes and Bounds

James Wall, Department of Resources Qld

The spatial cadastre – a representation of imaginary land boundaries – is a vital component of the modern system of ‘land tenure’, meaning ownership. The symbols and systems (collectively “metrology”) of cadastral land surveying have been in use for almost 6000 years, and their emergence was entirely coincident with the introduction of formal taxation and the concept of debt, key material events in the anthropologies of primitive accumulation and class struggle. Today’s fully mature, fully digital capitalism requires a fully digital cadastre as the necessary foundation for emergent and highly profitable ‘digital twins’ of our built and natural environments. Positioned and funded as open, democratic, collaborative simulations – a ‘new digital commons’ – these digital twins will instead be born into immediate enclosure.

Bio: James has worked in the Queensland public service for 20 years, with a private sector background in communications and IT. Most recently he has been project managing Queensland Government’s Cadastre and Address Modernisation (CAM) Project in the Spatial Information branch of the Department of Resources. CAM’s objective is the long-overdue modernisation of the systems and procedures used to manage and maintain the state’s spatial cadastre – land boundary – and location addressing datasets. He looks forward to sharing some of the strictly personal and very much not-representative-of-government-policy insights he has accumulated from this experience.

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