re: Half of the UK is owned by 1%

For the sake of clarification and because The NY Times decided to omit referencing it, yes the Crown Estate is obviously one of the major landowners. However to clarify, The Crown Estate =/= The Royal Family,

The revenue from The Crown Estate goes directly into their Treasury, thus for all intents and purposes serves “the people”.

The article is also somewhat lacking in not pointing out the differences between leasehold and freehold holdings. The former is very common (almost exclusive) in the densely populated southeast, while freehold is by far the most common outside of London, Kent, Essex, Surrey etc.

While it also may seem confusing to many here, this method does keep the properties in the higher populated areas more affordable than if they were all freehold. It also does complicate re#selling a little but in reality 99 years of a leasehold on a property initially should be plenty for most people. It’s simply a system that works there but couldn’t here.

It boils down to your philosophy, here corporations can end up owning metropolises with little to no revenue passing onto the people, whereas there with limited real estate available, the revenue regenerates itself for the use of the whole population.