Highgate cemetery at a crossroads. How to take the right turn? A contribution based on the economic theory of clubs

Abstract

Highgate Cemetery is running out of space. If that problem is not solved in a satisfactory manner, the Cemetery might have to shut down its operations in the future. Trying to avoid such a scenario, in 2017, the Friends of Highgate Cemetery Trust, the Cemetery's managing body, commissioned Alan Baxter Ltd., a London based consultancy Erm, specialists in the design and conservation of urban spaces, to carry out a baseline study formulating the core questions related to that problem. Regarding the imminent shortage of burial spaces, the draft's authors suggest the re-use of graves. lf the re-use of graves is organised and carried-out with the sole objective to maximise the number of spaces available in the future, the Cemetery might have to give up its unique atmosphere, which constitutes, by itself a financial asset as it appears to be obvious that the exceptionally high prices that are paid for a burial space at Highgate Cemetery are, in part at least, owed to the Cemetery's character of melancholic abandonment. This chapter addresses that scenario with its delicate balance between differing objectives through an approach based on the economic theory of clubs, presented by Michael Buchanan in 1965. In this chapter now, his theory is applied to Highgate Cemetery. With that theory, it can be shown that there exist indeed stable partial equilibriae, that is, combinations of the variables in question, which maximise the Cemetery's stakeholders' (i.e., all involved parties, such as grave owner, visitors, and the bereaved) overall benefit.