Context:

Our current laws regarding the use and taxation of land encourage incredibly inefficient vacant lots in the middle of urban cores. What should be, say, a massive apartment housing hundreds is nothing more than a simple parking lot that holds a few dozen cars.

The way to defeat this is simple: remove inefficient land use regulations that prevent good land use (NOT actually beneficial health and safety regulations like separating industrial from residential zones), and tax the value of land to make hoarding an enormous liability, in turn ensuring that investment in parcels is the only profitable option.

Real world evidence backs this up, in Pennsylvania’s state capital of Harrisburg, the local property tax was split into two rates: one on the building and one on the land, with the land rent being multitudes higher than the building portion. According to the Library of Economic Possibility:

“From 1982 to 2009, there was $4.8 billion in new investments, businesses increased, and over 40,000 building permits were issued. The tax base went from $212 million to $1.6 billion, the number of residential units shot up, the crime rate went down 46%, and the number of vacant structures dropped by 80%.”