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Poor land use in the world’s greatest cities carries a huge cost

economist.com

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Re: Poor land use in the world’s greatest cities carries a huge cost

#121

Post by dankohn1 »

jgalt212 wrote: post #91
dankohn1 wrote: post #41

I may live in the densest neighborhood of any HN participant: North Battery Park City [1] in Lower Manhattan. As an example, my son's 500 kid elementary school serves 9 buildings. And I'm here to tell you, the future feels great. Specifically, living vertically has all sorts of wonderful aspects in terms of community (the kids can trick-or-treat without leaving the building), access to resources (my kids can ride the…

> And I'm here to tell you, the future feels great. While the future may feel great to you, most New Yorkers would agree that Battery Park City does not feel like New York. That may be good or bad depending on your perspective. And just in case, you think I'm here to knock you, I'll leave you with this Abraham Lincoln quote: I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives.

For single people moving to NYC, Battery Park City would be the last place I recommend (I would look at NoHo, North Williamsburg, and Bushwick). But if you have kids, it is a great option.

Re: Poor land use in the world’s greatest cities carries a huge cost

#122

Post by [deleted] »

Frozenlock wrote: post #44
j_baker wrote: post #33

> Land taxes are efficient. They are difficult to dodge; you cannot stuff land into a bank-vault in Luxembourg. Whereas a high tax on property can discourage investment, a high tax on land creates an incentive to develop unused sites. Land-value taxes can also help cater for newcomers. New infrastructure raises the value of nearby land, automatically feeding through into revenues—which helps to pay for the improvemen…

The harm for the owner in leaving the lot vacant for a decade is opportunity cost. If he is in a valuable spot , it would be advantageous to sell and just do something else with the money. Imagine high land taxes in the middle of the desert. Is it an incentive to build? Quite the contrary.

[deleted]

Re: Poor land use in the world’s greatest cities carries a huge cost

#123

Post by omegaworks »

j_baker wrote: post #33

> Land taxes are efficient. They are difficult to dodge; you cannot stuff land into a bank-vault in Luxembourg. Whereas a high tax on property can discourage investment, a high tax on land creates an incentive to develop unused sites. Land-value taxes can also help cater for newcomers. New infrastructure raises the value of nearby land, automatically feeding through into revenues—which helps to pay for the improvemen…

There's actually weird disincentives to building built right into the tax code:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonynitti/2013/12/31/tax-geek...

It's about capital-gains tax vs income tax. Because the rates are dramatically different and the case law is so convoluted, people who hold land as an investment don't touch it.

If they touch it in the wrong way, the sale of that land is taxed as regular income instead of capital-gains. In America, regular income tax is DOUBLE capital-gains tax.

Re: Poor land use in the world’s greatest cities carries a huge cost

#124

Post by arfar »

tn13 wrote: post #118
j_baker wrote: post #33

> Land taxes are efficient. They are difficult to dodge; you cannot stuff land into a bank-vault in Luxembourg. Whereas a high tax on property can discourage investment, a high tax on land creates an incentive to develop unused sites. Land-value taxes can also help cater for newcomers. New infrastructure raises the value of nearby land, automatically feeding through into revenues—which helps to pay for the improvemen…

That is very shallow logic. If there is a land tax, any product or service that uses land will become more expensive for everyone. Whatever gain in productivity we might get by making vacant lands usable will be simply negated by the loss in productivity due to the land tax. Also, taxation is meant for government to run to do its primary duties and not affect the market forces.

>Also, taxation is meant for government to run to do its primary duties and not affect the market forces.

I don't think this is the case for every tax. Look at the different carbon tax systems. This is a tax to try to drive the market towards greener solutions/products.

I guess an argument could be made that the tax is a way to quantify damage to the environment done and the money it's going to take to repair it, but I don't think that's the way most people see it.

Re: Poor land use in the world’s greatest cities carries a huge cost

#125

Post by jes »

jschwartzi wrote: post #92
jes wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for your comment, and for obviously being concerned with issues of fairness. If a person makes an investment, and that investment goes up in value, even substantially, and even with no additional effort on the part of the investor, does that justify others taking some or all of the resulting value? If I bought stock in Apple years ago, because I thought it was a smart thing to do, and I simply held the stoc…

Stock is different. Your stock certificates in Apple don't increase or reduce the value of other stock certificates you own just by their proximity and configuration. To put it another way, if you own common stock, and later develop some of it into preferred stock, does the value of your remaining common stock also go up? If you have shares of Microsoft also, and those certificates are next to the Apple stock in your…

Thank you.

You write that there is an argument to be made for discouraging sitting on land as a real estate investment, without using it to benefit the neighborhood that it sits in.

Let's say that you are right, that there is such an argument to be made. In other words, the neighborhood in which the property resides would benefit from some improvements to the property in question.

In this case, why should the affected parties not try to work together to accomplish it?

For example, if I own a vacant lot in the middle of a neighborhood, and my neighbors want to use the land for a park, I'd be happy to discuss selling some or all of it to a neighborhood association.

On the other hand, if the neighbors are going to get together and petition the local city council to confiscate my property, say through eminent domain, that seems like an unreasonable intrusion on property rights.

I understand that people want things. However, I think we'd all be better off it we sought to work things out through voluntary cooperation and free trade – in an environment where individual rights are respected – rather than empowering politicians to pass laws that grant special favors to certain groups.

Re: Poor land use in the world’s greatest cities carries a huge cost

#126

Post by jes »

UVB-76 wrote: post #110
jes wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I am arguing against taxes. I'm against taking things by force from other people, which is what taxation appears to be, as I understand it. You are correct, of course, that land owners are taxed. I don't expect to live to see the day when most people realize that initiating force against others is counterproductive. But I do think it's helpful to look into the essentials of things. Thank you for a good discussio…

Your argument conveniently overlooks the role of force in the establishment and maintenance of property rights. Without the state (or society, if you prefer) exercising, or threatening, the use of force against people who would otherwise infringe on your property rights, your 'ownership' of your land is worthless. So it follows the state (or society) expects something in return, as your exclusive use of your land is…

Thank you for your reply.

Yes, I understand that people look to the state to protect property rights.

Unfortunately, it seems like we have not yet avoided the situation where the state itself becomes a frequent and massive violator of property rights, and people's individual rights in general.

Perhaps we will someday discover other ways in which the protection of individual rights can be accomplished.

Re: Poor land use in the world’s greatest cities carries a huge cost

#127

Post by ctdonath »

deet wrote: post #79
dankohn1 wrote: post #41

I may live in the densest neighborhood of any HN participant: North Battery Park City [1] in Lower Manhattan. As an example, my son's 500 kid elementary school serves 9 buildings. And I'm here to tell you, the future feels great. Specifically, living vertically has all sorts of wonderful aspects in terms of community (the kids can trick-or-treat without leaving the building), access to resources (my kids can ride the…

High density doesn't always equate to pleasantness though. It still has to be done right to be livable. I spent last year living near Columbus Circle (the southwest corner of Central Park in Midtown Manhattan) which is probably equally dense as Battery Park, and didn't care for it much primarily due to its mixed use. The population density is quite high there, but it is mixed in with office buildings that suck the ch…

Indeed. If density is paramount, we can cram everyone in a 1km^3 box. http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/03/7-3-billion-people-one-buildin...

Re: Poor land use in the world’s greatest cities carries a huge cost

#128

Post by staybailey »

logfromblammo wrote: post #76
krschultz wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That the value of land is substantially based on the environment around it, one that is largely driven by societal factors. 1 acre of land in Manhattan is extremely expensive. 1 acre of land 20 miles north of Manhattan is not expensive. The difference is everything surrounding the land. If the people in a community have decided to spend a lot of their money to reduce crime, improve transit, improve schools, and impro…

I suggest that the underlying value of the land is zero, or so close to it as to be statistically insignificant. The market value of land is overwhelmingly dominated by proximity to improvements. If you subtract the value of improvements on the land itself from the market value, you are still left with the value of being near the improvements on all surrounding properties. The true underlying value is the value it wo…

Actually it isn't that hard. The land value is simply the property value minus the value of the depreciated physical capital (buildings etc.) on it (LV = PV - K). This calculation is already done in the market in order to determine the size of a home owners insurance policy. Property tax values aren't ideally precise, but are already common enough that replacing them with and land value tax wouldn't greatly impact tax code precision.

To address your more general critique, it might be better said that you are paying a location tax as opposed to a land tax. Specific locations have particular value and until we develop hand of god technology, putting multiple units of land in a given location will be impossible. So land vs. location is really just a semantic difference.

Re: Poor land use in the world’s greatest cities carries a huge cost

#129

Post by ashark »

rayiner wrote: post #85
jes wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't wish to be confrontational, but in my view, taking other people's property without their voluntary consent is wrong. As I understand the last paragraph of your comment, you wish to see the owner of the vacant lot forced into a situation where he had to act in some way other than how he currently chooses to act. In other words, you want to substitute your judgment for his, when it comes to the use of his prope…

I think land has probably the least defensible claim to inalienable property. You didn't create it, it'll be here long after you're dead. You have it because the government stole it from a bunch of Indians by force, and it's only the government's continued threat of force that allows you to preserve your claim on it.

To expand on your post:

I've noticed that anti-tax and anti-government folks tend to focus on rights that are "natural", yet it seems to me that, if we accept the notion that the "naturalness" of certain rights is both real and a measure of their value, the right to broad access to most land currently held as private is more "natural" than the right to buy far more land than one can personally use while preventing all others from using it in any way, unless (maybe) they pay you for the privilege.

The fact that money changed hands and some papers were signed seems irrelevant to the "naturalness" of exclusive access to land, to me—then again, I consider concerns over and arguments revolving around "naturalness" to mostly be a distraction when it comes to figuring out which freedoms I'd prefer to preserve over which others, so maybe I'm a bad judge of these things.

Re: Poor land use in the world’s greatest cities carries a huge cost

#130

Post by [deleted] »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #39
smutticus wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Per-capital carbon production is lowest in dense urban environments. Suburbia and low density rural areas are the real carbon pigs on a per-capita basis. We need to change the wrong headed notion that dense urbanity is somehow bad for the environment. On the contrary, it's how we need to build in order to save the earth.

> We need to change the wrong headed notion that dense urbanity is somehow bad for the environment. On the contrary, it's how we need to build in order to save the earth. I'd like to see the capital/environmental costs of heavy urban development compared to electric cars in the suburbs and rural areas. I'll drive a Nissan Leaf ($199/month) if it means I don't have to live in an urban area (I work from home).

[deleted]
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