1
2
3
| Wealth and Want | |||||||
| ... because democracy alone is not enough to produce widely shared prosperity. | |||||||
| Home | Essential Documents | Themes | All Documents | Authors | Glossary | Links | Contact Us |
|
Urban Planning
Planners have a litany of great ideas for
rebuilding cities(4) -- set-backs, landscaping,
pedestrian bridges, bridges, etc -- but have no idea of
how to pay for them. One way is to let them pay for
themselves. Improving a city raises its land's value. A
tax or fee can collect this ground rent that can then be
used to pay off the earlier investment in ecologizing the
city(5). Indeed, the expected change in
land value can be a perfect measure of some proposed
improvement's worthiness. If it can pay its way, throw it
up. If it can't, then back to the drawing board.
No longer inhibited by the property tax yet spurred by annual land dues (tax or fee), owners and developers get busy. Some Australian towns that tax land alone average 50 percent more built value per acre than those that don't. Since a mix of apartments, stores, offices, schools, theaters, etc. maximizes site value and the return to builders, they could find themselves pulling on the same end of the rope with planners. Where planners, armed with the sternest growth control measures, have failed, geonomics can succeed. By making speculation too expensive, it unplugs the "metro tub," letting the flow of development return to its natural course, filling in the vacant lots and abandoned buildings. Clever local governments, no longer able to tax willy-nilly and thus more dependent upon site rent, would squeeze streets, now overly wide for traffic, replacing parking lanes with space for sidewalk cafes beneath rows of shady trees, alongside lanes for bikes, and thereby drive up site values.
... How long would it take to ecologize cities
after shifting its property tax? While Johannesburg
(South African) levied a rate of only 3 percent on site
value, it enjoyed the fastest site-recycling rate in the
world, a little over 20 years. Within a couple decades,
we could have those cities we'd love.
As cities grow more livable and lovable, their site values rise. The resultant increase in land dues would push owners to continually convert to highest and best use automatically. In this positive feedback loop, cities would constantly renew. While generals and anarchists might
not easily find common cause, planners and markets can,
when planners paddle with, not against, the mighty current
of rent. Correcting the market, so that taxes and rents no
longer interfere with the choices of owners and developers,
would attain highest and best use of sites
automatically.
Read the whole
article Herbert J. G. Bab: Property Tax -- Cause of Unemployment -- circa 1964
Relatively low taxes on land and high taxes on
improvements will discourage the owners of vacant lots or
underdeveloped land, such as that used for parking lots,
gas stations, hamburger stands, etc., from improving
their land. It will encourage them to keep the land out
of use and to sell later at a profit. This will create an
artificial shortage of land, which in turn will lead to
urban blight and irregular, leapfrog city
growth.
This urban sprawl makes our cities look ugly, but it has many disadvantages besides:
It is generally believed that
zoning laws are a very effective tool to control the
growth of our cities. Zoning laws determine the best
possible use of urban land. Yet nobody can be forced to
improve his land and to build unless there is an
incentive. This can be achieved by taxing land at a rate
that will make it unprofitable to hold it without
improving it.
The city planner needs land taxation just as he needs zoning laws. With both these tools the orderly growth of our cities will be assured, but -- as experience has shown -- without land taxation rational and efficient land usage becomes impossible. Read the whole article |
|
|
to email this page to a friend: right click, choose
"send"
|
||||||
|
Wealth and Want
|
www.wealthandwant.com
|
|||||
|
... because democracy alone hasn't yet led to a society
in which all can prosper
|
||||||