They paved paradise and put up a parking lot because our economic system incentives people to leave land vacant and let it accumulate value without out giving anything back
People can and will hold onto vast amounts of land and refuse to sell till the price gets high enough, this hoarding of land leads to a worsening of developer capitalism as only the most wealthy can afford to buy land off these hoarders and our cities suffer for it because they are either left hollow and empty or are under the control of an incredibly small powerful minority with the funds to shape the form of our cities
Anyways, check out this crazy idea
Couldn't this be accomplished by ordinances as well? Like if you're land is valued above a certain fraction of the structures and business that it holds (with exceptions for existing inhabited residences), you are required to start building/improving something that meets those requirements or put it up for sale? I'm just concerned that taxing the value of the land itself might downside poor people whose neighborhoods are already being gentrified.
Poor people don't tend to own empty lots, the policy is often accompanied by a reduction on taxes on buildings to incentivise people to build on the land. We can't force people to build, we just have to heavily encourage it through things like changes to tax structure.
You're right that poor people don't own empty kids. But, many of them inherit older homes that aren't as valuable as the land that they're on. This is especially true in gentrifying ethnic neighborhoods. In those cases, taxing the value of that land is going to force poor residents out of their communities. And there's very little that the law can't do if communities vote in favor of it. I think it's harder to get people to vote for a new broadly defined tax than a clear cut ordinance that explicitly discourages vacant lots.
A land value tax can be reduced on land that has buildings already on it, that makes it less harmful towards the poor than our existing property taxes. And we have no way to force people to build on the land they own, that's not how the American legal system works, what we can do is make it more expensive to own vacant lots so they will seek to build to recoup their investment now instead of waiting till the land is more valuable to sell and build. Tell me how on earth would a city ordinace that forced people to build on the land they own even work?
where the hell are you people living that undeveloped land in midst of people is a bad thing? aren't there plants there? is your city devoid of animals who need shelter? are there no trees in this land giving you clean air?
what am i missing here?
Parking lots in many American cities take up over a quarter of the land in downtowns during a housing crisis
