It creates a trade-off between living in high-infrastructure areas (cities) and paying for the infrastructure directly or indirectly through your taxes, or livi

It creates a trade-off between living in high-infrastructure areas (cities) and paying for the infrastructure directly or indirectly through your taxes, or living in low-infrastructure areas (rural) and saving on your taxes. A related question is―why do we so frequently build new development out on the edge of a city (sprawl), and why do we so rarely build up development in the heart of a city (infill)? The latter would seem wiser, as the city already has an infrastructure system to build upon. Why don't we do this, instead choosing to bring the infrastructure out to where it isn't? The answer is related to the lack of a LVT―it's cheaper to consume marginal land for near-free and improve it than to utilize supermarginal land to its highest use, due to the return that landowners expect for it. (For an extreme example, consider why Walt Disney chose to buy swampland in Florida rather than expand his development in Anaheim.) The same payment to landowners is what prevents the extension of public transit: the government may invest in this infrastructure, but the benefits go to land values near the improvements. Stiglitz formalized this effect in the 1970s[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George_theorem