The overall claim is true - yes put it on a map.<p>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".<p>I think a 2d choropleth map with a diverging color scale centered on the mean value would work better.
The main purpose of the 3D is to communicate the extreme differences in scale of value, which chloropleth alone doesn’t always get across as it flattens the magnitude disparity. Keeping true north to avoid confusion is a good point.
Yeah, I agree. And if the surface is complex the Z features tend to obscure the complexity. I make maps like these for the cities of Berkeley and Oakland, but I use a color scale. And I usually aggregate at a larger granule than parcels. For e.g. <a href="https://observablehq.com/@jwb/2024-25-berkeley-property-tax-density" rel="nofollow">https://observablehq.com/@jwb/2024-25-berkeley-property-tax-...</a>
The other thing people often forget is that the 'land value' is also a measure of the city's well-being.<p>Those big spikes you see in the center? They cost <i>very</i> little for the city to maintain, and generate oodles of tax money.<p>Those big, wide areas out towards the fringes? They generate next to no tax income and cost a <i>lot</i> to maintain.<p>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.
Most true suburbs aren't within the big city limits, so I'm not sure your point is well-founded. For example, in the DC area, the suburbs aren't even in the same state as the city and yet the suburbs seem to be thriving.
The Bronx is sub-urban? As someone else noted, Manhattan and The Bronx are totally different in ways that probably has little to do with population differently.
Utilities and roads out into the suburban may be underpriced, but there’s a dark side to cities too. The suburbs and rural areas are often where people can afford homes.<p>I’ve had this hypotheses for a long time that the car is, at least economically, only incidentally about mobility. In reality it’s a tool for obtaining leverage in the real estate market.<p>Without sprawl urban landlords would have a captive audience and would extract all surplus. See: the law of rent.<p>I have a related hypothesis that the car drove the mid century middle class explosion in the US and some other countries, not by providing car jobs or any of the other conventional mechanisms but by allowing people to escape the law of rent.<p>Telework does this today for those who can use it, allowing people to leave high cost cities where good jobs are concentrated. The car did that until we reached the scaling limits of sprawl.
> "1. People have wildly incorrect intuitions about where land value is concentrated"<p>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?".<p>> 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.<p>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.
Manhattan is where basically everything you might associate with New York is (Empire State building, World Trade Center, Times Square, Central Park, etc.). The Bronx is where Jennifer Lopez reminds us that she came from as she keeps it real.
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?
Land and "improvements" are assessed separately, and I believe this is plotting just the assessed land values. In the small text about each map, it says to use the settings to switch to full assessed value or improvements. But still, it's very hard to actually assess land value in an area like Manhattan where there are basically no land-only transactions
It is a good question. The author seems to use the field "assr_land_value", and there is also an "assr_impr_value". So it very well may be correct.
Nice idea, except the actual mapper site requires a google login to view.
> Show an elected official<p>What is the problem this visualization seeks to make obvious? Is it just neat to think about and make?
Author here. This is the problem we are seeking to solve, we are property tax reform activists:<p><a href="https://open.substack.com/pub/progressandpoverty/p/enacting-land-value-return-in-your?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web" rel="nofollow">https://open.substack.com/pub/progressandpoverty/p/enacting-...</a>
A minor thing - I know that article is part of a broader body of work and is not meant to solely present your ideas by itself. But nonetheless, since you linked to it, I had to scan down quite a bit to answer the question that was immediately on my mind: "tax reform for what purpose and why?"<p>And, an aside, I'd personally recommend getting rid of the emoji bullet-point additions: in this day and age, well, you know.
How much the land is worth is only one of the parameters.<p>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?
IIUC the maintenance costs of suburbs is <i>higher</i>. Not sure if you meant that.
I've seen it argued both ways and I've yet to see real evidence, especially considering many suburbs are themselves actually cities/towns, and that cities seem to fight tooth-and-nail to prevent suburbs from leaving.
Yes. And it’s not like you can tear up all the roads leading out of a large city (or just let them decay).
Have you ... looked for evidence? I guess I always felt that it was self-evident that horizontal development costs way more in terms of roads, pipes, and wires, and at the same time raises almost nothing in terms of revenues. Residential-only development patterns never pay their own way. <a href="https://resources.environment.yale.edu/kotchen/pubs/COCS.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://resources.environment.yale.edu/kotchen/pubs/COCS.pdf</a>
You have it backwards. Suburb infrastructure is expensive and the land pulls in little tax money by comparison. They're almost always a net loss on the city's budget.
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".