This paper aims to elaborate on the notion of resilience by analysing the historical long-term impact of recovery processes that follow catastrophic events. In this respect, the approach reveals the importance of two major dimensions of disaster recovery practices: the establishment of an effective resilience milieu in conjunction with the generation of safety knowledge. The analysis focuses on two island case studies in Greece that experienced devastating earthquakes in the 1950s: Cephalonia (Ionian Sea) and Santorini (South Aegean Sea). Both insular cases underwent a comprehensive and (in many respects) innovative reconstruction process that set the scene for establishing a ‘resilience milieu’ and, in a dialectical manner, a ‘safety culture’, which for many years has been embedded in local development trajectories and influenced spatial growth dynamics.

Community Land Trusts (CLTs) have emerged as alternative housing models mainly taken up by civil society organizations aiming to de-commodify land and ensure long-term affordable housing, while fostering participatory democratic governance and (re)claiming the right to homeownership. Drawing on empirical evidence from the CLT in Leuven (Belgium) and research conducted between November 2022 and February 2025, this study examines state-led CLTs and their potential in providing affordable housing and democratizing housing systems. The leading role of local authorities serves as a catalyst facilitating access to land and resources while setting up democratic and collaborative governance processes towards the creation of housing commons. However, their involvement introduces market mechanisms that undermine long-term affordability. This research mobilizes the literature on commons and commoning, housing affordability debates and governance theories to explore the paradox of state-led CLTs: Can they democratize housing governance, or does state involvement inevitably reinforce the market mechanisms they seek to counteract? The paper argues that states can initiate commons without fully co-opting them, provided governance is polycentric and reflexive. The contribution of state-led housing commons lies not in radical rupture but in incremental decommodification and emergent commoning, showing how commons can evolve within capitalist states.

Τhe paper analyses an insular community, Astypalaia in the Aegean Sea, which hosts a distinct commons institution that has acted as a governance catalyst. It has so far safeguarded the delicate balance between the development of supplementary subsistence activities (agricultural, pastoral, fisheries, and food processing-supply), community building, fair distribution, and management of landed resources, and overall landscape justice. This article unfolds the critical factors that have fostered or restrained the longevity of this Landed Commons (LCs) and reveals the emerging risks from both exogenous (international and nationwide dynamics) and endogenous (organisational structures and governance capacity) agents. The case of Astypalaia is placed within the broader debate on the role of commons in local communities, leading to significant insights into how this LCs can be revalorised by the host community establishing renewed stewardship within current socio-economic trajectories.

Land policy as an all-encompassing socio-economic domain has experienced a long-standing evolutionary process operating either as a foundational component of spatial planning or as an inherent policy entity in developmental strategies. Either way has endowed the advancement of numerous policy tools of its own, like land administration-registration practices, land banks, land expropriation, land consolidation, pre-emption rights, air rights development transfer, development rights, taxation, re-parceling and land compensation mechanisms. At the same time, land policy has been a rather critical element in all phases of safety planning (emergency planning, recovery-reconstruction planning and disaster mitigation-prevention planning). This study elaborates on the issue of land policy as an eminent component interlinking spatial planning, safety planning and development policies. Further on it highlights the wide variety of land policy tools that allow dealing (proactively and reactively) with disaster management and promoting resilient territories. Set in this context, the aim of this article is to reveal the importance of land policy in flood protection, focusing on a distinct flood risk setting: the Evros River Basin in Northern Eastern Greece; and more specifically in the making of an integrated safety-resilience planning strategy.