Spatial planning as mitigating land rents: From symptom treatment to prevention

Abstract

Planning practice often treats urban problems, such as housing unaffordability, inequality, and urban sprawl, as separate symptoms to be treated in isolation. This paper revisits Henry George's argument that many of these challenges may stem from land rent-the unearned income arising from the ownership of scarce and non-produced land. It explores how far George's diagnosis remains relevant in light of contemporary evidence and planning theory. We identify two types of rules dominating planning practice: patterning rules, which attempt to prescribe desired outcomes, and reactive rules, which respond to visible problems. Both rule types, either by relying on predictions that are seen as impossible to obtain in complex systems or by neglecting possible details of underlying mechanisms, treat symptoms without properly understanding their root causes. Together, they undermine allocative, catallactic, and bureaucratic efficiency, erode pluralism, and weaken the rule of law. Building on Moroni (2015), the paper develops the concept of anticipatory framework rules: general, simple, and preventive rules, which rely on qualitative rather than specific predictions. Applying this diagnostic approach to urban problems reveals how land rent functions as a structural driver of unaffordable housing, inequality, speculative cycles, urban sprawl, and stagnating progress. After theoretical and empirical examination of the qualitative predictions of land rents, we argue that land value taxation (LVT) should not be viewed merely as a fiscal or value-capture tool, but as an anticipatory framework rule that filters out land rent before it manifests itself in social and economic symptoms. By addressing root causes rather than outcomes, LVT exemplifies how planning and fiscal policy can shift from a reactive to a preventive approach, thereby simplifying governance by eliminating redundancies while still aligning private incentives with collective welfare.