Quote:
Originally Posted by GGG
One thought I had is that your taxes should be based partly on the amount of land you take up. A 50 foot x 100ft lot anywhere in the city theoretically should have the same cost impact to the city. Just because one is in the burbs and one is inner city doesn't change the impact. Because to add a citizen who wants a 50 x 100 ft lot you need that amount of space. And that inner city house on a 50 x100 ft lot causes the entire city to sparwl by that amount. So you should at least have a portion of your tax based on the cost of sprawl you contribute to.
The key point in the above is that it isn't where you live that determines if you are part of sprawl or not. It is the amount of room you take up. So a Condo in the burbs is better for the city long term than a house in the inner city. And the 35 x 100 foot lots that make up a good potion of the new burbs are better for the city than existing 50 x 100 foot lots that people refuse to sub divide.
Does that make sense? The amount of land you occupy is your contribution to sprawl regardless of where you live in the city and should be taxed accordingly.
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Well, looking at lot size as a single factor (since, obviously, a condo building that's one city block will cost a lot more to service than an acreage that's one city block), there is a lot of sense in what you've said.
In fact, you could go even further and say that an oversized lot in the inner city is more costly than one at the periphery, because at the edge of the city you aren't pushing anyone away from the core, whereas in the middle of the city you increasing the commutes of everyone further out (assuming they work downtown).
Of course, flipping that around you see that condos near the city centre and larger homes further out is preferable to a low-density core surrounded by dense suburbs (
). Of course, that's assuming you're not accounting for transportation costs any other way.
Again, assuming you're not accounting for transportation costs by another method and employment is centered in the CBD, then it is also clear that development further out has a bigger effect on transport infrastructure than inner-city development. Someone close to the core adds traffic to a small length of road (or LRT). Someone further out adds traffic to a much longer length.
I also want to keep the distinction between new developments and existing ones. New development should not be subsidized. If the developers pay the full cost of front then there's not need for a "new development surtax", but if you're only going to change the tax structure (and not development fees), then there needs to be mechanism to recover the initial subsidy from its beneficiaries.
The main point I want to make (and not to you specifically) is this: yes, it is very difficult (or even impossible) to come up with a perfect system. But it's also very easy to make improvements from what we have now.