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.