<story><title>Who owns Parliament?</title><url>https://whoownsengland.org/2016/09/06/who-owns-parliament/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>henrikschroder</author><text>&amp;gt; The Crown Estate Commissioners have done this under the terms of the Land Registration Act 2002, which allows the Crown to register an interest in otherwise unregistered land.&lt;p&gt;This is wild to me. What do you mean &amp;quot;unregistered land&amp;quot; ? How the hell can you have been a nation for centuries and still have land that no-one owns? How can you be uncertain about who owns a piece of land? How can you have disputes?&lt;p&gt;Every single square centimetre of Sweden is mapped, surveyed, registered, and owned. There exists one national, public database of who owns what, which means that for every single square centimetre, I can ask who owns it and get a definitive answer. No uncertainties. No secrets. No confusion.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>esquivalience</author><text>Unregistered doesn&amp;#x27;t mean unowned. It just means that the land registry, an official government register of ownership, doesn&amp;#x27;t have an entry (yet). The registration system was created in 1925 to replace the previous system of tracing ownership through a decentralised system of dusty old documents, but land normally only gets registered when it&amp;#x27;s sold or if the owner decides to register it.</text></comment>
<story><title>Who owns Parliament?</title><url>https://whoownsengland.org/2016/09/06/who-owns-parliament/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>henrikschroder</author><text>&amp;gt; The Crown Estate Commissioners have done this under the terms of the Land Registration Act 2002, which allows the Crown to register an interest in otherwise unregistered land.&lt;p&gt;This is wild to me. What do you mean &amp;quot;unregistered land&amp;quot; ? How the hell can you have been a nation for centuries and still have land that no-one owns? How can you be uncertain about who owns a piece of land? How can you have disputes?&lt;p&gt;Every single square centimetre of Sweden is mapped, surveyed, registered, and owned. There exists one national, public database of who owns what, which means that for every single square centimetre, I can ask who owns it and get a definitive answer. No uncertainties. No secrets. No confusion.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>zinekeller</author><text>In general, that&amp;#x27;s called the Torrens titles (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Torrens_title&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Torrens_title&lt;/a&gt;) after the MP of South Australia (which is now an Australian state) which implemented it. It&amp;#x27;s actually not that common, to highlight this in the US only Guam (which was then part of the Captaincy General of the Philippines) is the only US territory or state fully implementing Torrens titles, with some states partially implementing it and some (like the area in and around Chicago and the state of California) repealing it.&lt;p&gt;Edit: I need to clarify that some states&amp;#x2F;countries have non-Torrens land registries (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Land_registration&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Land_registration&lt;/a&gt;) or deeds registries (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Deeds_registration&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Deeds_registration&lt;/a&gt;) but they only record what allegedly happened and ownership can be challenged in court, so these registries are not a &lt;i&gt;guarantee&lt;/i&gt; of ownership (unlike in Torrens titles where the titles are indefeasible and the only possible lawsuits are about the circumstances of the transfer like if the original owner was defrauded).</text></comment>