I watched the entire linked Not Just Bikes video, but I only read the first few paragraphs of that article. Linking to a full article like that is like the opposite of TL;DR.
I think we can agree urban sprawl is a problem. It forces a cities resources to get spread thinner and thinner as things are built out, and like your link video stated, it leaches from the downtown areas that are self-sustaining.
In my opinion the taxes should exactly reflect the expenses such that it incentives more efficient land use. What that would actually look like from a legal sense, I’m not going to pretend I know enough to write.
No, [land value taxes are] not like property taxes.
The important difference is that when you tax only the land and not the value of the improvements on top, it doesn’t discourage improving the land to its highest and best use the way that property taxes do.
For example, downtown properties with surface parking lots on them (or similarly underdeveloped uses, like self-storage warehouses) ought to pay the same tax as the skyscrapers next door. That’s how you make it stop being profitable to build shitty surface parking lots and self-storage warehouses on prime real estate.
Ditto for building McMansions on 1-acre lots instead of bungalows on 1/9-acre lots (or better yet, townhouses or small apartment buildings) in neighborhoods just outside of downtown.
TL; DR: Just. Tax. Land!
I watched the entire linked Not Just Bikes video, but I only read the first few paragraphs of that article. Linking to a full article like that is like the opposite of TL;DR.
I think we can agree urban sprawl is a problem. It forces a cities resources to get spread thinner and thinner as things are built out, and like your link video stated, it leaches from the downtown areas that are self-sustaining.
In my opinion the taxes should exactly reflect the expenses such that it incentives more efficient land use. What that would actually look like from a legal sense, I’m not going to pretend I know enough to write.
It’s even worse than you realized: each word was a separate link. 😅
I did write this relatively-short comment about land value taxes yesterday though, if it helps: