Reviving the Idea That Urban Land is Common Wealth

[marmar]

from OnTheCommons.org:



Reviving the Idea That Urban Land is Common Wealth
In the early 20th Century, Progressives saw urban land as common property

By Rich Nymoen & Jeff Smith


During the Progressive Era that ended with World War I, there was a popular economic imperative to make land common property, especially with regard to urbanized land. This meant not that land should be nationalized or occupied communally. Instead the concept was similar to the one applied when an estate is left in common to its inheritors, which often leads to them renting out the property and splitting the proceeds equally among themselves.

In the Progressive Era view, humanity inherited the earth “in common” so its land should – for both moral and economic reasons — be “rented out” to those holding title to it, with society collecting the rent in the form of a tax equal to the land tract’s annual rental value. This fund would then be used to pay for the public goods and services that contribute to land’s value, with surplus funds divided equally as a per capita dividend to the public.

Failing to publicly collect the land value as a form of common wealth by leaving it in private hands has profound environmental and economic consequences. Environmentally, it means that landholders can occupy much more land than they can effectively use, either neglecting it or holding it for speculation, (i.e. waiting for its value to go up before cashing in). Today this means a checkerboard pattern of development with vacant or derelict lots dotting urbanized regions while construction is pushed outward in a sprawl pattern that is environmentally unsustainable.

Currently, the only way one can profit from land is to develop it or sell it. However, if the profit from land were viewed as our common wealth, then we’d benefit to the degree that the land in our region was best used – which includes non-use. To illustrate, consider Central Park in Manhattan. Every time developers go to the city council with proposals to develop within the park, New York rejects the proposals. Not because the Green Party has taken over the Big Apple but because of the bottom line. The city gets more revenue from the surrounding properties with the park kept open than it would if the park were developed from border to border. Open space is profitable to the community, even if not to any individual owner of the open space. Hence, to remove the motive to develop every parcel of land – and to be fair to all owners – it’s necessary to combine the value of all land in a region into a common fund, then share the revenue as an equitable dividend to residents. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://onthecommons.org/magazine/reviving-idea-urban-land-common-wealth

[niyad]

1. k and r