Well modern land ownership in cities is not really that different from renting IMHO. It's surprisingly conditional and complicated. The land is still the sovere

Well modern land ownership in cities is not really that different from renting IMHO. It's surprisingly conditional and complicated. The land is still the sovereign property of whatever country you live in (with various increasingly localised bits of government also having some sovereignty). "Owning" just means you have a limited bundle of legal rights pertaining to a certain place. You can't build what you like (In Australia I'm not even legally allowed to run a cable inside a wall), there are quite hard limits to externalities and you still have to pay land rent (which is nominally for services, but of course you can't opt-out). The main practical difference is the financial arrangement, you get a bunch of extra rights over a particular place which you can sell later on. It's also really nice to have the feeling that you can stay as long as you want. There are lots of alternative ways things could work though, what would you do differently?