Using Jane Jacobs and Henry George to Tame Gentrification

The solutions that Jane Jacobs proposed to improve neighborhoods created a paradoxical problem: improvement increased demand for the amenities of the area, which caused land prices to rise. The net result was at least partial displacement of the old residents of the neighborhood with new ones. Jane Jacobs has been criticized for ignoring gentrification, but she was clearly aware of this process and tried to find means to counter it. By combining the ideas of Henry George about land taxation with the ideals of Jane Jacobs about neighborhood diversity, we can mitigate the negative effects of gentrification and direct the energy of market forces into producing a greater supply of desirable neighborhoods.     

Henry George and Jane Jacobs on the Sources of Economic Growth

Henry George and Jane Jacobs shared a remarkably similar vision of the economic functioning of cities and of the sources of the economic growth of cities, despite having differing primary objectives. George wrote Progress and Poverty and subsequent works to persuade the public of the equity and efficiency of public capture of economic rents of land and other natural resources and elimination of taxes on labor and capital. Jacobs acquired fame for The Death and Life of Great American Cities in which she challenged the prevailing orthodoxy of the urban planning profession. Both saw the density and diversity of economic and cultural activities in cities as a facilitator of innovation and entrepreneurship in all aspects of civilization. Both also recognized the power of the price system in coordinating the activities of independent decision makers and the importance of trade for economic growth.     

Henry George,Jane Jacobs,and Free Trade

Henry George and Jane Jacobs were both journalists and made a contribution to economics based on their commitment to the original version of free trade, as understood by 19^th‐century liberals, rather than the late 20^th‐century version. The distinctive concept of free trade, as originally understood, was as an instrument for small‐scale producers to break up entrenched monopolies and serve the interests of the ordinary citizen. That was how Cobden used it in the debates over the Corn Laws in the 1840s, and how Ruskin, Gesell, Chesterton, and other critics conceived of economic liberation. In debates over free trade in recent decades, that term has come to mean a defense of power and privilege, the exact opposite of the intent of 19^th‐century liberals. George and Jacobs sought to restore the original meaning by developing theories of development and distribution that would enable the market system to benefit everyone.     

Jane Jacobs on Henry George: Progress or Poverty?

Henry George and Jane Jacobs each have devoted followers today who remain mainly outside the intellectual mainstream, both are iconic American intellectuals largely sympathetic to and quite knowledgeable about how markets work, and they each challenged the prevailing economic orthodoxies of their day. Much has been written, pro and con, on George's single tax and on Jacobs's battles with urban planners, and while I don't directly address either here, what I say does have implications for those controversies. In particular, I show how and why their views on the nature of economic progress, and of cities in that progress, fundamentally differ. I trace the difference to George's essentially classical approach to economics in contrast to Jacobs's subjectivist approach, which more radically transcends the economics of her time.     

John Dewey and Henry George: The Socialization of Land as a Prerequisite for a Democratic Public

John Dewey frequently praised Henry George, author of a plan to confiscate land values with a “single tax.” Scholars have failed to account for Dewey's support of George. Some have argued that it should not be taken seriously because it is at odds with their interpretation of Dewey's philosophy. This article demonstrates that Dewey perceived the socialization of land values as an essential step toward creating a true democracy. Furthermore, Dewey's interest in George was not an aberration; it was exemplary of his faith in ideology, theory, and transformative social policy. Despite contentions to the contrary, pragmatists of the early 20^th century never emphasized skepticism, moderation, or rote empiricism. In fact, Dewey embraced the philosophy of Henry George as a general theory of history of society. During the Great Depression, Dewey attacked the piecemeal reformism of the New Deal in favor of the comprehensive vision of Henry George.     

Sun Yat-sen and Henry George:

A bstract . Of Sun Yat-sen's "Three Principles of the People," the third principle, namely the People's Livelihood, forms the ultimate goal for social welfare. In this principle Dr. Sun tried to syncretize the economic theories of the West and adapt them within the Chinese context.
The equalization of land ownership through taxation of self-assessed land values, and the land value increment tax are the most essential ingredients of the third principle. Underlying Dr. Sun's concept of equalization of land ownership is the unearned increment theory of Henry George.
Dr. Sun conceived of agrarian reform as basic to the solution of the livelihood problem. Henry George also saw the cause of distress and destitution in the defective land tenure structure and the monopoly of land.     

Homelessness and Inequality

Homelessness and housing insecurity in the United States are not so much a housing problem or a poverty problem as a visible sign that growing wealth inequality has left millions of people unable to earn enough to afford adequate housing. The classical economists David Ricardo and Henry George linked wealth inequality by arbitrage to unequal income and wages. The greater the inequality of wealth, the greater the inequality of income and the lower the wages at the bottom. Neoclassical economics has largely obscured this relationship. Consequently, proposals from both conservatives and liberals to address homelessness focus narrowly on housing. Ultimately, reducing wealth inequality requires national tax reform and a return to vigorous antitrust enforcement. However, cities can reduce local inequality by making property tax assessments uniform, or, better yet, by shifting to taxing land only.     

Gentrification and Blight: Relationship to Involuntary Displacement

Because homelessness is visible in cities with high levels of gentrification, the media have linked the two phenomena. But the displacement taking place in most American cities is due more to blight than to gentrification. This article examines both sources of displacement and traces them to the same source: land speculation. In declining cities, land speculation causes parcels to be held vacant in prime locations, leading to disinvestment and an inadequate supply of affordable commercial and residential buildings. In cities with booming economies, land speculation leads to redevelopment of entire neighborhoods where land appreciates in value due to new commercial or residential demand. The solution to gentrification and blight as sources of displacement is to increase land value return and recycling to stabilize urban economies and avoid the boom-bust cycles that are so detrimental to cities.     

Natural Rights: Henry George and the Economic Fruits of a Good Society

This article examines Henry George's understanding of how natural rights grow out of a just society. His views were influenced by the 17^th‐century proponents of natural rights, but cannot be subsumed under them. The connection of freedom to obligation affirmed by George's classical Protestantism allowed him to overcome tension between theories of natural law and natural rights. Rights and responsibilities were not abstractions for George. His practical solution for restructuring society offers a modern path to a more just society in which rights would abound.     

Does the Henry George Theorem Provide a Practical Guide to Optimal City Size?

A bstract .   The spatial distribution of economic activity is determined by a balancing of increasing and decreasing returns to scale activities. The Henry George Theorem states roughly that, if economic activity is efficiently organized over a "large" space, aggregate land rents equal the aggregate losses from the decreasing returns to scale activities. Kanemoto, Ohkawara, and Suzuki have tentatively applied the Henry George Theorem to investigate whether Tokyo has too large a population. This paper has two aims. The first is to explore the Theorem and its generality; the second is to examine whether it provides a promising conceptual foundation for estimating whether particular cities are over- or underpopulated.     

Lessons of Enduring Value: Henry George a Century Later

A bstract . Henry George , in the judgment of Joseph Schumpeter, was an economist , self taught but, for his time, a century ago, well taught. George's writings can serve mankind constructively today. He wrote brilliantly in showing the destructiveness for human well-being of tariffs which obstruct international trade. His language shows clearly why such impediments to trade wastefully depress levels of living and opportunity. George foresaw some of the more sophisticated reasons why socialism could not be economically successful and also why it would threaten human freedom. Regarding the possibilities of reducing poverty , however, George has not been fully confirmed by a century's experience. But the reasoning that underlies his case for relying on land taxation for government revenue deserves serious attention today.     

Henry George and the Shakers: Evolution of Communal Attitudes Towards Land Ownership

A bstract . The influence of Henry George on the Shakers has been misunderstood. The most prominent late nineteenth century Shaker elder was Frederick W. Evans , brother of George Henry Evans , the land reformer of the second quarter of the century. Similarities in the programs of G. H. Evans and Henry George have been recognized, but the two proposed different kinds of land reforms. Evans promoted quantitative restrictions on land ownership , while George was known for his advocacy of a single tax on land. The New York Shakers, as large land owners, successfully resisted early G. H. Evans type land reforms. Later, Shakers led by F. W. Evans embraced Henry George-type policy proposals and supported George for mayor of New York City. E. W. Evans himself, however, conflated Henry George's proposals with those of his brother, never realizing the contradiction between the two, much less resolving it. The consequences of Shaker ambivalence toward their large landholdings persisted well into the twentieth century.     

Henry George's Perspective on War and Peace

This essay examines Henry George's perspective on war and peace. With justice added to the foundation in the way that Henry George proposes, the conditions of inequality and conflict that lead to war will no longer prevail. George saw that trade prohibitions furthered elite rule, militarization, and a worldview of “them” versus “us.” George's great contribution was to see how these big issues of War and Peace bore directly upon the constellation of rules governing the relationship of people to planet, humans to humus, earthlings to earth. Social arrangements not based on the fundamental and equal human right to the earth lead inevitably to a gross imbalance of political power and thus to government corruption, odious public debt, war, and preparations for further war. Although he warned us of what might befall the United States if it took the imperialist path, George seemed hopeful that the highest and best moral purpose of our nation would prevail. The paper concludes with an assessment of contemporary devices that protect the interests of the few over the many—subsidies, the ballooning national debt, the ever‐widening wealth gap, megacities, and the full‐spectrum‐dominance objective of U.S. imperialism.     

Henry George, Emile de Laveleye, and the Issue of Peasant Proprietorship

A bstract .   In Emile de Laveleye's demonstration that communal landholding was universally a characteristic of primitive societies, Henry George saw evidence of a golden age before the development of private ownership of land. Though he agreed with George that unequal access to land was a major cause of the social evil of poverty, de Laveleye did not consider it the sole cause of poverty. Where George would nationalize land rent, de Laveleye would make private ownership more widespread; and he faulted George for giving too little attention to the question of how government would use the revenue from a land tax, and for failing to consider the concentration of capital as a cause of poverty.     

The New Barbarians: The Continuing Relevance of Henry George*

Abstract . The world's peoples are demanding: who should be the Lords of the Land or—should anyone be? By what right does anyone acquire the privilege of monopolizing that which should be the heritage of all? A century ago Henry George saw the nature of this question, the land question, outlined the solution and foresaw the consequences if we failed to address it. The rioting in the slums, the looting and other crime in the cities and rural areas, the tension of our time, the rising fears, paranoia and greed bear testimony to the legacy George foresaw. Against monopoly and privilege, George raised the banner of Justice and Liberty, achievable only by taxing the land and untaxing labor and its products. The failure to act upon the land question is at the bottom of the threat of a new barbarism. But the Intellectual Revolution fostered by the new computer technology promises to undermine myths that have enslaved the human mind.     

Public Choice and Land Tax Fairness

Land value taxation (LVT) as desirable U.S. tax policy was brilliantly set forth by the American publicist and economist, Henry George, in the book Progress and Poverty, published 100 years ago. Economists concerned with state and local taxation have generally accepted the basic elements of George's analysis. The absence of substantial LVT legislation despite the economic efficiency and ethical strengths of land as a tax base arises from two sources. First, the public perception of land has not separated land's attributes from those possessed by other property. Second, land ownership data have not been gathered and publicized. Groups favoring taxes that promote economic justice and efficiency should support efforts to develop land ownership data. It would be an important first step toward fully utilizing the potential of LVT.     

Joshua K. Ingalls, American Individualist: Land Reformer, Opponent of Henry George and Advocate of Land Leasing, Now an Established Mode

A bstract . Joshua K. Ingalls was a member of a particularly cohesive group of 19th century intellectual iconoclasts in America, the individualists. Two controversies made him widely known at the time: the land reform vs. abolition argument before the Civil War, and his attacks on Henry George in the 1880s over the issue of land reform through tax reform or land reform through land leasing under an occupancy and use system of tenure. Ingalls held George failed to understand the "true" nature of capitalism; rent goes to the landlord as capitalist as reward for his investment; the landowning capitalist appropriates this by his dominion over the land. Though Ingalls' argument did not prevail, land leasing, which he advocated, is the form in which some resources are now disposed of, as in grazing rights and mineral exploration on public land, and in oil exploration rights on the continental shelves; and in the disposition of urban sites such as the site of Rockefeller Center and the Chrysler Building in New York (the former to the benefit of Columbia University, the latter Cooper Union, both by legislative action).     

Henry George and the Intellectual Foundations of the Open Source Movement

The emergence of a common development platform (either in the form of open source projects or proprietary products) and the corresponding economic communities that emerge to support those platforms is similar in scale and scope to the concept of the city found in Henry George's economics of time and place. A modern counterpart to the 19^th‐century focus on land can be found in the 20^th‐century concern with the establishment of intellectual property rights that fence off a portion of the creative commons in order to construct temporary monopolies. Captured in the open source movement where licenses that specify property rights are adopted in order to provide a great deal of flexibility in terms of how ideas are used and shared, a strong connection can be drawn between this modern movement and the work of Henry George. Building a connection between the two provides greater clarity in terms of understanding how in a modern technology‐based economy, progress can be achieved without poverty.     

Henry George and The Reconstruction of Capitalism

A bstract . The moral basis for the recommendation of Henry George that land , not labor and capital, be taxed is explained. The justification is that the value of land is socially created by density of population and as a result of private and public improvements , such as roads and utilities. This policy is advocated on the basis of its very successful, if limited, use in many places. It is contended that the need for many forms of social intervention in the economic process, which have many side consequences, would be dramatically lessened.