It does work that way, though. Except it's not exactly 'better', but rather 'more economically productive', which may or may not be better depending on your value system and the specific cases that arise.
> For a rural example, a single house on several acres is much nicer than a ticky-tack suburban panopticon (or even worse a HOA).
Arguably nicer, yes, but the suburban hellscape is definitely a lot more economically productive.
> Economically it's hard to prevent the latter from occurring over time (eg parents die and kids want the most money possible, so they subdivide), but we shouldn't be encouraging it through policy.
This feels like an orthogonal issue to me, that US-style suburbia is bad. Though honestly the rural living you describe is probably no better. Oh sure, it's nice in some ways, but there's problems a plenty there too: it's more destructive for the environment per capita, and it causes problems with the intersection of the social contract and social services.
For an example of that last bit, look at the struggle with rural high speed internet. Arguably necessary for economic activity as well as educational purposes, but it's much more expensive to wire up and service super low density areas, and yet people in those areas have less money, not more. So you end up with either a) left to the free market, they have shit internet access, or b) people in urban and suburban areas subsidize them getting better internet, even though for most people there it's an explicit choice to have that lifestyle (as opposed to, say, the urban poor).
And it's not just internet: most infrastructure and services are harder to deliver in rural areas, and you can end up in shitty situations because of that. Even if you accept that it's fine for adults consenting to it, what about kids who grow up with fewer opportunities?
Neither dense suburbs nor rural suburbs are defined by economic productivity, because they're residences. If this shifts with work from home, their focus will still be on quality of life rather than packing people in as close as possible for more "specific revenue".
> the rural living you describe is probably no better
If you have to drive everywhere anyway, do you also want to be looking through your neighbor's windows? I do miss being able to walk many places (city living), but that isn't the density tradeoff I'm talking about here.
In general your arguments seem to be extrapolating from comparing urban to rural/suburban. Comparing rural and suburban directly, I don't find your points compelling. Going from houses on 1/2 acre lots to houses on two acre lots is one half the linear density. The costs of transportation and utilities increase a little, but aren't going to double - once you're rolling or trenching, going a little further is easy.
Furthermore I'm currently in a quasi-rural area with gigabit muni fiber, so I don't buy that argument either. Whether there is the political will to build out modern Internet access or suffer the extractive oligopoly depends entirely on the politics of an area.
> what about kids who grow up with fewer opportunities?
IMO kids in suburbia are the most caged in. Having to be driven anywhere sucks, but that's a given for both areas under comparison. Once you get past the nadir of suburbia, the increased space helps - kids in rural areas can go play outside, wander in the woods, build stuff, fly drones, etc.
Our experiences color our views. I grew up in rural towns (<800 people) to cities of 15K people(! :-) ). Lack of services, lack of opportunities (library? yeah - 1 room of books from 1950), wandering in the woods was cool until about 12ish? then it was "yeah, I saw that tree yesterday..", not to mention I'm not sure how many parents these days would be comfortable letting their kids wander around - especially in 'desolate' areas ... Also, these were 'mill towns' so one employer basically employed everyone.
I ran as fast as I could when I was 18.
oh - and btw, pulling utilities can be quite expensive - 'going a little further' isn't always easy (or even possible).
So while a 'quasi-rural' (suburb with larger yards? :-) ) might be your idea of heaven, it doesn't necessarily translate well across the board.
In short, what people want/like or what is 'better' is pretty hard to get a consensus on.
Suburbs are certainly not my ideal of "heaven". I feel like I'm being argued with by younger people still in the phase where they're in love with the city, extrapolating my points into general indictments of density. They're most certainly not. All I'm pointing out is that once you're already past needing to drive everywhere, having the space to actually do things and be left alone is much nicer than being packed up on your neighbors.
I'm actually an empty nester, and I took my car off the road like 2 years ago cuz I never use it. I put in a server room, electronics workstation, basic woodworking, and a bunch of 3d printers. Couple that with being in a small 'city' now (500K people) and I really like the balance. Plenty of space in the house (1700 sq ft), no huge yard to maintain, can get pretty much anything delivered, no septic/well to deal with. I'm very happy with how its working out for me. On the other hand, I think I only have a 7500sq ft lot (1700 of it covered by the house), so others would probably consider it small - especially if you want a pool in the backyard.
Cost proportional to area doesn't even make sense for utilities or roads (average distance only goes up as the square root), never mind straightforward per-resident costs such as public school or trash disposal.
The rural lifestyle is heavily subsidized by productive urban Americans -- telecom, housing, hospitals, roads, electric networks, and on and on.
https://www.downsizinggovernment.org/agriculture/rural-subsi...
Schools/hospitals/trash disposal/wastewater treatment - heavily proportional to population, with a negligible increase per area due to convenience - O(1).
Distribution (telecom, electric, trash hauling, water, sewer) - Picture a square town with a single N-S route and one E-W route per row of lots - O(L)
General transportation - The average distance between any two points also goes up linearly - O(L)
Roads themselves - probably the closest thing proportional to area, but that's not even true as in less dense areas it's easier to drive further in the wrong direction (say further east before being able to cut north). O(L^1.5) ? In the absolute worse this is O(L^2), but what else is?
Note that based on lot sizes I'm basically talking about denser or less dense suburbs here. Suburbs are their own hellhole regardless of density, but I've seen many developments with neighbors right on top of one another in areas that are otherwise more spread out. Despite the increased density, those developments are straight residential (no stores, restaurants, or even parks to walk to), and thus gain little from the increased density besides the developer packing in the maximum number of economic rent streams.
And tying this back to Georgism - what does that look like if you're a neighbor to one of these developments? The town increases their valuation to pay for the per-resident cost. Then it declares that your land is worth a similar amount. So you're either stuck paying the same real estate taxes as a multiple family development, or selling your house so another development can be built.
As for the land value economics of multi-family development in rural areas: it just isn't that important IMO.
However your described scenario seems like a great way for the rural area to become economically relevant by gradually building up a functional amount of density.
Cities themselves are obviously centers of commerce and concentrations of wealth - but it's nonsensical to extrapolate this feature as applying to slightly denser suburbs. If someone lives in the suburbs and commutes into the city to work, then all their "productivity" happens in the city. And obviously the more workers you can fit into a given area, the more work gets done (cf factory housing).
Furthermore, cities are inherently more interconnected and thus the activities there are more legible to the system, whereas rural work is less so - eg a couple working full time plus and hiring maids/contractors/etc to take care of their home creates a lot more cashflow than a rural couple DIYing.
Not necessarily. They could well be paid for by any other taxes. Income taxes, etc. There's no rule to state that certain taxes have to pay for certain expenses.
I agree.
> Land taxes offer the opposite incentives. They encourage you to make your property better.
But it doesn't make the converse true. At most, you can say that high enough land value taxes encourage making real estate generate more revenue, to pay the tax. But given the current economy's tendency to optimize everything legible and whisk away the surplus upwards, it's dubious whether being pushed harder into the economic grindstone is "better".
For a rural example, well separated houses on a few acres are much nicer than ticky-tack suburban panopticon developments (or even worse an HOA). It's hard to prevent the latter from occurring over time due to the economic gradient (eg parents die and kids want the most money possible, so they subdivide), but we shouldn't be pushing it through policy.