Also because of our property-tax regime. Tearing down a depreciated/ing low-rise to put up a fresh new high-rise will cause a reassessment of your property value, and because the building is new you'll get hit with a massive tax increase based on your property value shooting up.
The problem being that real-estate property values are only liquidated on selling a building, so you just end up passing the tax on to renters.
A tax on land-value or space usage tends to work better for allowing high-value construction to be done rather than continual depreciation of a whole city.
The problem being that real-estate property values are only liquidated on selling a building, so you just end up passing the tax on to renters.
A tax on land-value or space usage tends to work better for allowing high-value construction to be done rather than continual depreciation of a whole city.