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A comment on Land-value tax: Why Henry George had a point. Parent comment

Re:Land-value tax: Why Henry George had a point by cm2187 on Saturday October 24, 2015 @06:57AM (#10443186)
I am not a planning expert but my understanding is that pretty much the whole city is listed which means that the low rise houses can never be replaced. There are some areas that are not listed but then you have rules about panoramas, ie you need to be able to view certain monuments from many viewpoints, which creates an invisible web of max building height over London. As a result only a few spots can be built up.

As for the narrow streets, I am not questioning their charm, but they make transportation very slow, and therefore make it difficult to build out to compensate not builing up.

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Re:Land-value tax: Why Henry George had a point by ZenoArrow on Saturday October 24, 2015 @07:26AM (#10443247)
This video captures quite a bit of what I consider important in city planning, would be interested to hear your thoughts on it:

http://youtu.be/Hy4QjmKzF1c

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Re:Land-value tax: Why Henry George had a point by cm2187 on Saturday October 24, 2015 @07:54AM (#10443314)
I pretty much 100% agree with it. Except the 5 floors rule. Paris or Vienna are 7-8 floors. Upper manhattan is 10-12. And these do not feel particularly oppressive.

Tokyo is another interesting type of urbanism. You have very large avenues delimiting blocks. The blocks can either be residential, in which case you walk in what feels like a quiet little village with its narrow streets. Or they can be "entertainment", with a dense web of noisy bars, restaurants and game arcades, lots of light and people.

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Re:Land-value tax: Why Henry George had a point by ZenoArrow on Saturday October 24, 2015 @09:47AM (#10443574)
I agree that the 5 floor rule doesn't make sense all the time, though the limits used should be linked to the width of the streets. I believe it's good to make sure sunlight can reach every window for at least part of the day, though there's a certain charm to some narrow side streets too.
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