Taking into account the ongoing democratic transformations in our country, the decentralization reform deserves special attention, which is aimed at ensuring broad independence of territorial communities in solving their own socio-economic problems of a particular region. One of the key issues of such a reform is the formation of capable administrative-territorial units, endowed with full power not only in terms of administrative management but as full owners of the relevant resource base grounded on land. Unfortunately, the transformations carried out in Ukraine through privatization in general and privatization of land and legislative consolidation of new forms of land ownership have led to uncertainty about the object composition of communal land ownership, failed to ensure social harmony, creating crisis phenomena of demographic and socio-economic nature, especially in rural areas. As a result, the legal model of state regulation of land relations remains incomplete, in which the balance of private and public interests in land use within territorial communities would be ensured by law, which determined the content of the study. The work analyses the theoretical and normative principles of land ownership, in particular, the conclusion that the form of land ownership due to its functional purpose and special subject-object composition, determines the mechanism of formation and termination of ownership. Scientific conclusions and recommendations are formulated, on which it is expedient to build a modern state policy on the formation and establishment in society of the concept of communal ownership of land as a basis for the effective development of territorial communities. According to the results of the study, the need to change the administrative-territorial division by regulating the community at the constitutional level as the primary administrative-territorial unit, which is the basis for the formation of communal land ownership. Amendments to the Land Code of Ukraine are proposed in order to determine the right of communal ownership of land within territorial communities.