Land ownership site - a glimpse of the future?
Tom Steinberg
I've just stumbled across this site, which shows where the council
owns land in one particular council:
http://whoownsmyneighbourhood.org.uk
I'm intrigued by this because I've definitely had conversations about
a site like this over the years, possibly with Francis Irving, and
definitely with Stefan de Konink, a dutch hacker I met a few months
ago.
Can you imagine how great it would be if that map extended to the
whole country, and showed the land registry information for every last
piece of land? I reckon many people's view of where power really lies
in our country would shift quite a bit for the better (as well as
being a handy tool for people working out where to buy or build
stuff).
I'm CCing in the international transparency-tech list to ask them if
they've ever seen anything like it elsewhere - I reckon this is an
idea that should be talked about more.
In the meantime, I guess I should say well done to Thumbprint
Co-Operative, Kirklees Council and Nesta for giving us a tiny glimpse
of (a possible) future.
Tom
M.Skop KohoVolit.eu
there is a public registry of real estates in the Czech Rep.
You can look for any house or any land and get the owner (and more),
with a map and links to the neighbours (so you can go on and on).
Limitations: The public cannot (at least not for free) insert a name and
get a list of all his/her properties. Also, a map with information about
ownership "on hover" of the mouse is available to the Office only.
Example (sorry, Czech only, use Google Translate if necessary)
home:
http://nahlizenidokn.cuzk.cz/
houses:
http://nahlizenidokn.cuzk.cz/VyberBudovu.aspx?typ=Stavba
- choose a town, e.g. 'Plasy'
- leave 'Cast obce' and 'Typ stavby' and insert number 'Cislo stavby',
e.g. '1'
and click 'Vyhledat'='Search'
You should get to info page about the house, most importantly Owner
(Czech republic in the example 'Plasy 1'), who is responsible (National
technical museum in the example), etc.
There is a link to the map ('Zobrazení v mapě'), where you can see
numbers of the houses/lands (to use in next searches, for example).
Very important: there is a link to the land the house stands on ('Na
parcele:')
If you follow the link, you get to the info page about the land, e.g.:
http://nahlizenidokn.cuzk.cz/ZobrazObjekt.aspx?&typ=parcela&id=1665571435
again, with owner, etc.
(note: as you can see, there is some 'id', so it is possible to scrape
all the information from the server, however, I have found it a bit
difficult)
There is one more nice feature for lands: direct link to a page with all
the neighbours ('Sousední parcely') of the given land.
Michal
--
Mgr. Michal Škop, Ph.D.
KohoVolit.eu
micha...@kohovolit.eu
+420 775 187 021
