Well, the Charter Cities Institute is trying to help make stuff along these lines happen, but they’re probably not as interested in super-high density things. I’ve heard Singapore tends to have better urban planning than other countries. Many European countries and Japan have nice train systems, but still have a lot of cars as well.
I may end up being unable to align with the Charter Cities Institute due to their stance on eminent domain. I hope the reasons are clear from the post, if not, I’ll try to explain it fully. I guess I could do a little post about that. It seems to me that private ownership of land inevitably puts a limit on the affordability/value/qol of cities.
Traditional land ownership puts us in a situation where you must either constantly bleed money just to occupy space, or where you must pay price for land that takes into account its potential use as a device for constantly bleeding money from its occupants. Land is not elastic, so the prices aren’t incentivising anything useful, except for producing density, but we can and probably should and maybe (to get ideal density) have to use other mechanisms to producing density. We can choose a legal system where those costs don’t have to be paid by anyone. If we can buy enough rural land before prices go up, we might not even need the support of the state in order to implement that.
Okay no, I think that’s a full explanation? I don’t think I’ve ever said it that coherently before.
I think the issue I have with this is: Density is expensive and may not be necessary. Let the market decide if it’s a good idea. Deferring the density question to another system begs the question of how efficiently it matches the market and how it works. The city can still tax away land value increases and give that money back in other ways, or limit the total tax. A new city doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It competes in a broader space market and overall market of tax burden. Pricing these too low may just limit city growth.
The price on usable space being close to the value is an effective means of prioritizing who lives where as well as initial motivation to build. That value can lower if the supply increases, or homogenize with good transportation. Land value lowers some from land value increases being taken by the city. A Harberger tax may also cap property prices.
Land prices generally can’t rise significantly until multi-story wood construction saturates buildable land. Depending on whether cross-laminated timber is about as cheap as traditional wood construction and built space per capita, that should happen at a threshold of either around 200k or 1.4m ppl per sq mi. Even if land prices rise significantly, that price is amortized over the number of floors afforded.
Nice post. I’m excited—is there a place where people who want to work on this sort of thing / live there can coordinate?
Well, the Charter Cities Institute is trying to help make stuff along these lines happen, but they’re probably not as interested in super-high density things. I’ve heard Singapore tends to have better urban planning than other countries. Many European countries and Japan have nice train systems, but still have a lot of cars as well.
I may end up being unable to align with the Charter Cities Institute due to their stance on eminent domain. I hope the reasons are clear from the post, if not, I’ll try to explain it fully. I guess I could do a little post about that. It seems to me that private ownership of land inevitably puts a limit on the affordability/value/qol of cities.
Traditional land ownership puts us in a situation where you must either constantly bleed money just to occupy space, or where you must pay price for land that takes into account its potential use as a device for constantly bleeding money from its occupants. Land is not elastic, so the prices aren’t incentivising anything useful, except for producing density, but we can and probably should and maybe (to get ideal density) have to use other mechanisms to producing density. We can choose a legal system where those costs don’t have to be paid by anyone. If we can buy enough rural land before prices go up, we might not even need the support of the state in order to implement that.
Okay no, I think that’s a full explanation? I don’t think I’ve ever said it that coherently before.
I think the issue I have with this is: Density is expensive and may not be necessary. Let the market decide if it’s a good idea. Deferring the density question to another system begs the question of how efficiently it matches the market and how it works. The city can still tax away land value increases and give that money back in other ways, or limit the total tax. A new city doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It competes in a broader space market and overall market of tax burden. Pricing these too low may just limit city growth.
The price on usable space being close to the value is an effective means of prioritizing who lives where as well as initial motivation to build. That value can lower if the supply increases, or homogenize with good transportation. Land value lowers some from land value increases being taken by the city. A Harberger tax may also cap property prices.
Land prices generally can’t rise significantly until multi-story wood construction saturates buildable land. Depending on whether cross-laminated timber is about as cheap as traditional wood construction and built space per capita, that should happen at a threshold of either around 200k or 1.4m ppl per sq mi. Even if land prices rise significantly, that price is amortized over the number of floors afforded.