[ForHackernews]

If you're taxed on the value of the land, rather than the value of the property built on top of that land, it arguably incentivizes buying super-cheap exurban land and planting massive McManisions on it.

Obviously in real life, people care about other things besides just pure acreage, but you can see the argument.

[taffer]

If people only cared about land area, the distinction between urban and non-urban land wouldn't even exist. What makes urban land special is the infrastructure, schools, workplaces, restaurants, cafés, theaters, libraries. These things make a city a city. These things promote density because people cluster around them.

As I explained in another comment[1], a property tax discourages density and encourages sprawl. A land value tax, on the other hand, does not have these adverse effects on density because it taxes only the fixed supply of land, not the variable supply of buildings.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28423428