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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

#111

Post by carapace »

jes wrote: post #63
omegaworks wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>taking other people's property without their voluntary consent is wrong. Knock! knock! Oh Hi Mexico... Toc! Toc! Hola Ohlone Native Americans... Possession is nine-tenths of the law. The law is man-made.

I agree, the law is man-made. Seemingly, it is made by men and women who do not care much, if at all, about what is actually right or wrong, what is to the interest of the citizens and what is not. What is actually right and wrong, in my view, is based on the nature and requirements of human life.

If you are looking for sincerity and fair-mindedness few people would advise you to look first among politicians.

All human government is an attempt to manage human wickedness. If we were not wicked we would need no laws.

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

#112

Post by afarrell »

jes wrote: post #98
krschultz wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're basically arguing against property taxes or capital gain taxes entirely. Our existing property taxes are measured against the improved (built-up) value of the land. An alternative would be property taxes against the unimproved value of the land. The latter are often called "land taxes". I personally think land taxes are better than as-built property taxes because they encourage investment. If you assume that l…

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…

If I buy something from a criminal gang that took it from another person by force, do I have a natural right to own it? What if I buy it from a shopkeeper who got it from such a criminal gang?

Does my right to it outweigh society's interest in using a portion of its' value to repair the effects of the gang's activities?

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

#113

Post by maratd »

rayiner wrote: post #95
Jacqued wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't even need to live in the future to have a very high density. Paris proper has a density of 50000/sqmi yet has simply and literally banned high rise buildings. There are 2 districts with a number of these (although low by manhattan standards, culminating at 100m) but they are relics of the 70s and none has been built since then. What is probably the greatest advantage of very dense cities is that you can hav…

It should be noted that Manhattan is a lot denser than it is on paper. It's daytime population is more than double its residential population. Midtown Manhattan on a weekday probably has several hundred thousand people per square mile, rather than the 70,000 per square mile nominal density of the island.

Bingo. There are a ton of people who live in the other boroughs, New Jersey, etc. that commute into Manhattan for work every work day and even on the weekends for fun.

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

#114

Post by olefoo »

Frozenlock wrote: post #94
andkon wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe that's a good idea: multiplying the opportunity cost ends up punishing the people who hold valuable land and don't develop it. The more valuable the land, the greater the punishment. That seems exactly what you'd want to do to encourage that West Oakland lot to get developed.

But why do you even want to punish ? There's already a cost associated with doing nothing with the land! Why do you consider it's not enough? Imagine a world where if you take a day off (or just slack off). You not only don't get paid, but also receive a negative salary because 'punishment'. The punishment would also be proportional to the salary of comparable individual (not you, other people). The more they work, t…

Whether you work or not doesn't cost me anything. But if you're hoarding a natural resource and playing games with the supply then you're costing me in increased rents; not just for me but for everyone around me. Your actions are creating a negative economic externality that I am not being compensated for. Extracting rents is a form of theft from society; a diffuse and difficult to trace theft but real, damaging and if allowed to continue unchecked a threat to the stability of society.

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

#115

Post by rhino369 »

melling wrote: post #21
rhino369 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is also the entire cause of the "gentrification" problem many are so pissed off about. Nobody wants to move into a poor area, they are forced into it because you can't build skyscraper high rises in the good areas.

No, they are forced to move to these areas because they want to have a bearable commute. Your solution is to jam everyone into a more confined area. Another solution is to make commuting from a "long distance" (e.g. 60-120 miles) more bearable. In NYC, for instance, subways could be built to NJ. Faster trains (low-speed maglevs) could be built like what's being done in China ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_S1,_BC…

Commuter trains have to stop and let people on and off.

Cities like Chicago have long distance commuter trains, but the commutes are still long. You can take a train from the near west side of Chicago to HArvard, IL (where Motorola built a huge campus and then abandoned it) in about an hour and 45 minutes. But it would be a 70 mile drive. But that skips over a bunch of farmland.

Chicago to Cary, IL would like SF to Mountain view. Train ride is 1:15 minutes. But then you need to get from the train stations to each door on both ends. Realistically its more like 1:45 door to door. People do it.

But living in a high rise is much more preferable to me.

I don't get why'd you make an low speed maglev.

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

#116

Post by guard-of-terra »

logicallee wrote: post #29
guard-of-terra wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there anyone preventing you from doing that?

there are no high-quality virtual environments (except for killing each other)? you literally cannot even throw an idea up on a whiteboard and have it be there two weeks later: there is no such thing online. (virtual second-life collaborative spaces.) online collaborative meetings are a joke compared to real life - as a piece of evidence, if they weren't you wouldn't have teams having to scramble to move to silicon v…

"there are no high-quality virtual environments"

But there are high-quality cities - tech hubs. That answers your question.

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

#117

Post by eqdw »

jes wrote: post #73
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…

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…

> If I bought stock in Apple years ago, because I thought it was a smart thing to do, and I simply held the stock, should other people get a cut of my gains when I sell?

They already do, indirectly, through cap gains taxes

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

#118

Post by tn13 »

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.

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

#119

Post by rhino369 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #18
rhino369 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is also the entire cause of the "gentrification" problem many are so pissed off about. Nobody wants to move into a poor area, they are forced into it because you can't build skyscraper high rises in the good areas.

Woah there nelly. "Lifting the barriers" to development doesn't mean that a 50 story residential tower will be built in Central Park West. You are the barrier. Lifting them means that as a citizen, you lose control of your surroundings. So when a big company, say Pfizer, works with the city to raze your neighborhood through an eminent domain process, you're fucked. ( http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New…

I wouldn't call giving free reign to eminent domain "lifting barriers."

I don't think Manhattan is a good example of a place with too restrictive laws. But SF and DC certainly are. In DC for example, you wouldn't see 80 story apartment buildings in Georgetown, but you would see them in Chinatown, NOMA, NavyYard, and other places.

Instead lower middle class black neighborhoods are converting to overpriced condos as fast as house-flippers can do it.

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

#120

Post by tn13 »

Frozenlock wrote: post #94
andkon wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe that's a good idea: multiplying the opportunity cost ends up punishing the people who hold valuable land and don't develop it. The more valuable the land, the greater the punishment. That seems exactly what you'd want to do to encourage that West Oakland lot to get developed.

But why do you even want to punish ? There's already a cost associated with doing nothing with the land! Why do you consider it's not enough? Imagine a world where if you take a day off (or just slack off). You not only don't get paid, but also receive a negative salary because 'punishment'. The punishment would also be proportional to the salary of comparable individual (not you, other people). The more they work, t…

^ I agree.

In general I dont understand why people think that government must act (that too via taxation) when they are not getting what they think they are entitled for. None of us are entitled for any cheap land. If someone is spending his own money and hoarding it I have no business complaining about it either.

Hoarding of natural resources is actually well studied and theorized concept in economics and is best explained by using the example of Oil. We all know that as time passes by Oil supply will only go down. But does that necessarily imply that prices of Oil will shoot through the roof ? Not necessarily. Any Oil producer will reduce the supply today if he thinks it can fetch him more value tomorrow. But more he hoards, the future availability goes up and hence the expected prices of Oil in future go down. This is a fine balance that all the people in this business understand and play accordingly. Not to mention the other sources of energy compete for the price too.

Same if true for land. The reason why people keep the land unused is because they think they can get much higher value in future when the land is even more scarce. But the very fact they keep the land vacant ensures supply of land in future and/or at sufficiently high price. If somehow the person if forced to sell of his land today, whatever reduction in land prices we get today, we will have to pay it back in future by even higher real estate prices.

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