your first paragraph applies pretty much equally to taxing land+developments. Also, in the context of a city building to the maximum of the zoning is a good thing in nearly all instances because higher density means you need less land to provide shelter for the inhabitants and it's way, way easier to provide most services to higher density.
Property taxes that factor in existing improvements doesn't leave the owner as far behind chasing potential value that they are already being taxed for. When your tax burden is a factor of expected market value of the land plus permanent improvements they're taxing you on what you already have. When it's based on an expected optimal value of the lad they're taxing you on what *they* think your land *should* be worth if fully developed.
Assuming that higher density is always better ignores the externalities required to maintain such a system. Higher density cities require more outside inputs brought in from outside the city. Those inputs strip resources from other lands, require input to process the raw materials, and require fuel and vehicles to transport the goods into the city frequently. The city's waste must be transported and processed somewhere, again adding impacts to the environment even if those impacts aren't directly felt within city limits.
If the goal is to minimize impact, cities would only be as large and as dense as they can reasonably be self sufficient. That doesn't preclude trade between cities, states, and countries, but it does mean the city isn't entirely dependent on a constant churn of bringing in resources from elsewhere and shipping out waste.
Last two paragraphs first: You are making a logic error here. A human at a certain level of (whatever you want to call it, productivity, success, wealth, whatever) will want a certain lifestyle level and will use vastly more resources to achieve that lifestyle in a less dense city. You can see that comparing pretty much any set of cities in the world if you stratify by income and look at resource usage/co2 output/whatever. Environmental cost of importing resources is also pretty low as long as you have good transportation methods in use (i.e. shipping or train with trucks minimized). So, if you actually want minimize impact the correct thing to do is to expand and densify cities until the decrease in environmental damage per capita from increasing density equals the increase in environmental damage from importing resources. This means the best setup is a dense city with a decent resource feeder area around it, not a self sufficient area with a less dense/more suburban city.
Now for the first paragraph: This is kind of the point because maximizing use generally means more density, which means more opportunity to minimize use elsewhere. I did outline one situation that I thought was unfair and should be addressed, which is the situation where you buy land zoned one way with a much lower value only to have it zoned another way on you that makes it a lot more valuable. Other than that specific situation, I don't agree with you that your first paragraph is a problem, it's a positive feature.
I'm honestly not sure if the logical error is on me there. If a majority of people honestly believe that humans are causing serious harm to the planet and still set a high bar for a certain level of lifestyle, environmental impact be damned, I think that's the error.
As far as shipping goes, it can definitely be comparably affordable to ship in products. Though you still have to factor in costs of everything from making and maintaining those vehicles, the oil and gas that moves them, and the costs on the area that actually produced the products.
My point isn't that everything should be magically fixed with more rural living or a perfect balance of density in cities. I'm simply trying to raise the other side to point out that things aren't simple or clean enough to actually run the math on whether dense cities are better or worse at reducing impact on the environment. There are simply too many factors and hidden costs along the way to calculate accurately.
> Higher density cities require more outside inputs brought in from outside the city.
Surely, it can't possibly be that simple. Sometimes that's true, sometimes it is not. If I want fiber to my house in the country I might be paying $30k to get that line all the way to my one house whether I want 100MB/sec or 10GB/sec. In the city it might be shared with hundreds and only need to run a few yards. Same for sewage. Same for police and fire.
Oh it's definitely not simple, I don't mean to input that.
Your examples only really touch on one relevant example though, sewage. Sewage isn't really an issue in rural areas, off grid seltic systems process waste on site and more compelling systems can even compost human waste with very little effort. Modern central sewage system only exist because of dense cities, they weren't needed before that.
High speed internet is purely a convenience and really shouldn't be a concern if there's any meaningful environmental impact from it. Police and fire similarly are conveniences that may turn into necessities in highs density areas. I live in a rural area where police may show up tomorrow if I call them now and our fire is mostly volunteer.
I've never heard of anyone having real issues from either. Volunteer fire still respond quickly enough and it's amazing how much less import policing is when people are more spread out and the expectation of turning to police for every problem isn't the norm.
Your environmental footprint for transport is higher though right unless you're cycling everywhere, because you need to travel further? Which involves everything you need that you don't produce yourself. Or you're all entirely self sufficient and never leave your smallholdings? I don't mean to sound like a dick, just trying to engage :-)
Many “rural” people actually live in small towns where it is entirely possible to drive less or not at all. I certainly put less miles on our vehicles even though we have more of them and kids now vs living in “the big city”.
However if all you ever do is drive to the big city I can see how that would take more time and distance.
Yes! And we can home school kids, hunt and fish and fix our own broken bones like they show in the movies. Just need alcohol for the pain (grow your own moonshine?).
Sure, more people should have the opportunity to gone school their children and hunting, fishing, and foraging is a great way to feed your family with less environmental impact. Knowing how to set a bone is great in an emergency, but I wouldn't recommend leaning only on that if you have other options. Alcohol does work for pain, though be careful with moonshine as poorly stilled liquor can have nasty side effects.
Resources are for a certain quality of life are the same regardless of location. Unless, you are willing to for a lower quality of lifestyle.
These resources can be transported to high density living, or spread out across 100x - 1000x area. Which do you think is more efficient?
Building roads, water, electricity costs millions/mile. All this must be built before you even think about shipping resources to support. Then services (schools, hospitals, dentist) -- all of these and services only make sense at scale.
