> we illustrate how conventional property taxes punish those who improve properties and invest in the city by providing housing and business, while those who own vacant lots or surface parking lots are rewarded for holding land out of use.

This was made dramatically obvious in Christchurch, New Zealand, after the 2011 earthquake.

Land that previously housed people or businesses in the central city became unsealed carparks run by an overseas company that dominates parking businesses here, for years, and many still are, 15 years on.

Likewise, the owners of buildings rendered unusable by earthquake damage had no compelling reason to demolish and rebuild, as their local taxes dropped significantly, as they're based on land value and improvement (i.e., building) value, and the building was now worth nothing.

So long as the increase in the value of the land outweighed the now minimal local taxes they paid, they'd still come out ahead when they finally sold.

Hence the local government resorted to naming and shaming the so-called "Dirty Thirty", because they had no other levers to pull.

https://ccc.govt.nz/the-council/future-projects/barrier-site...

But this still doesn't address the previously utilized land that is now just a muddy carpark operating for the benefit of a company in Singapore - they have no economic incentive to invest in a parking building when they can just run their business on several hectares of unsealed and frequently muddy and pot-holed sections in the central city while paying minimal local tax.

And in and around Auckland, New Zealand's most populous city and the most expensive to buy or rent a home in, they struggle with the land bankers, and ghost houses - properties owned solely for (largely untaxed) capital gains.

And then we struggle with a housing crisis.