[larsiusprime]

Author here. Our blog generally concerns property tax reform for our regular readership which is admittedly less clear to a new reader coming in cold: the intuitions I’m referring to is the average homeowner kind of assumes any tax reform (such as shifting taxes off buildings and onto land) is designed to impoverish them personally. The purpose of these maps is to show such people where land value in cities is really concentrated - Ie, not the m the suburbs. Mono centric city value might be intuitive to academics, but it’s not among regular everyday people.

[JoelMcCracken]

This is generally a big problem in Pittsburgh where huge areas of the most valuable land is owned by “nonprofits”

[esrauch]

Do you mean people underestimate how steep the gradient is, or they don't know it at all?

It seems kind of dubious to me that "everyday" people don't understand that land in cities is worth more than land in suburbs. It seems very transparent that you get a smaller lot size for the same price.

[larsiusprime]

Both. They do understand that it’s worth “more” in the city but they vastly underestimate the magnitude, and they vastly underestimate what that means in terms of where the total bulk of land value is concentrated, and therefore what the distribution of winners and losers will be in any tax shift scenario.