An analogy just occurred to me. Imagine an income tax not on what you currently earn, but on what you could earn given your schooling, credentials, experience, etc, and the available jobs within your region. Imagine how utterly unfair people would feel about that, and how quickly such a scheme would fall to widespread political pressure.

I get why an LVT makes sense from an economic perspective, but in practice it feels nearly as unfair as the above. Residents especially, but small and medium sized businesses would very quickly lobby to eviscerate an LVT. Imagine long-time residents getting kicked out not because a developer wants to make buck, but because the tax system requires that to happen. There's zero chance such a scheme could survive intact politically. In Pittsburg it's an LVT in name only, with a long list of exceptions and curious appraisals. And once it's applied ad hoc, which it must, there's all manner of distortions and incentives for corruption.

There are many ways for land use and tax policy to improve, but you have to come at from the perspective of improving the existing system, not revolutionizing it with an LVT. And you could probably get closer to an LVT by smart incremental reform than you could by trying to nominally pursue an LVT.