On the parks/“natural land”: would you rather land exist as an empty razed dirt field for speculators to wait to sell, or given back to the city?
Taxing the land value means there’s no incentive to own land that won’t be productive. The city or municipality can guarantee land it owns can have natural growth on it, whereas when private individuals own it the state can’t really stop the land from transforming into a parking lot.
As to how to value the land: the market decides. What is the price for the land, if you took away all existing improvements on the land itself? There is usually enough vacant similar land around where this is pretty easy to figure out.
The government can charge for services like upgraded electricity and keep the land value low, or they can bring the electricity to the land and count “lots of electricity available” as part of the value of the unimproved land.
Taxing the land value means there’s no incentive to own land that won’t be productive. The city or municipality can guarantee land it owns can have natural growth on it, whereas when private individuals own it the state can’t really stop the land from transforming into a parking lot.
As to how to value the land: the market decides. What is the price for the land, if you took away all existing improvements on the land itself? There is usually enough vacant similar land around where this is pretty easy to figure out.
The government can charge for services like upgraded electricity and keep the land value low, or they can bring the electricity to the land and count “lots of electricity available” as part of the value of the unimproved land.