Just Put It on a Map

Now map property taxes per acre and tell me who's subsidizing who in this country. Urban3 has been doing the work: https://codesigncollaborative.org/urban-revolution-through-d...

Municipal costs per resident are effectively the inverse of these maps because the more spread out people are the more roads, pipes, etc are required to reach them.

The other thing people often forget is that the 'land value' is also a measure of the city's well-being.

Those big spikes you see in the center? They cost very little for the city to maintain, and generate oodles of tax money.

Those big, wide areas out towards the fringes? They generate next to no tax income and cost a lot to maintain.

The urban subsidizes the sub-urban. The sub-urban lifestyle would be completely impossible without the ultra-dense urban centers. If planners and citizens don't keep that in mind, you can easily end up with an insolvent city budget that is bleeding from maintaining all the utilities and roads stretching out to the exterior.

This is mostly a result of zoning, isn't it? The high land value areas are the ones where you're less prohibited from building taller buildings. If the thing people actually want is indoor space then the piece of land where you can build a skyscraper is worth a lot more than the one which is limited to a single family home.

Someone should probably tell the homeowners with a high ratio of land to house who like to see their property values increase.

The overall claim is true - yes put it on a map.

But I'm not a fan of these particular maps because the use of 3d makes them harder to read. The isometric view and rotation away from north at the top break conventions that people use to orient themselves in the map and connect it to their lived experiences on the ground. I'm reasonably familiar with NYC geography, and I could not immediately recognize the landscape I was looking at in these maps. Ironically, it was only because I already knew the answer to the question that I could do so: "oh that huge green spike must be Manhattan".

I think a 2d choropleth map with a diverging color scale centered on the mean value would work better.

> "1. People have wildly incorrect intuitions about where land value is concentrated"

Fwiw this sort of land value gradient has been studied in economics for ages. See papers on monocentric city model, going back to Alonso (1964), Muth (1969), and Mills (1967). Or even further back, von Thünen was talking back in 1826 about how land values spike as you get closer to the marketplace.

This is great, and it also feels like a great way to answer the question "Where should I buy a house if I want to be close to the center but not in the expensive area?".

> Let’s play a guessing game. How much more valuable is land in Manhattan than in the Bronx? Take a guess, then scroll down for the answer.

As someone who has never been in New York and doesn't live in the US, I knew beforehand that I would fail this test very hard, haha.

Is "land value" the right term here? The NYC example uses assessed property value, which I think is a function of both the land under a property and the building itself. In that case, these "taller means more valuable" graphics are at least partially reflecting the fact that a tall building is probably more valuable than the short one next to it?

Nice idea, except the actual mapper site requires a google login to view.

> Show an elected official

What is the problem this visualization seeks to make obvious? Is it just neat to think about and make?

How much the land is worth is only one of the parameters.

Notoriously, the maintenance cost for suburbs and their infrastructure is significantly lower than the tax they bring. Shouldn't that be a major point un tax decisions?

Was cool to see a few of the cities, and then cross reference with some searches on pricing to get a better understanding of the actual cost.

Probably fun to make but harder to read compared to a bar chart.

Note that the site that generated these does not support any San Francisco Bay Area cities. I learned this only after being forced to "Sign in with Google".