> That land gets its value from the city. Land in the middle of bumblefuck costs more than $500/acre. But this doesn't matter anyway because that high value f

> That land gets its value from the city. Land in the middle of bumblefuck costs more than $500/acre. But this doesn't matter anyway because that high value for land around cities exists presently. An acre of developable land 5 miles outside of Seattle proper is probably worth at least half a million dollars even if there's no infrastructure running there. > One can imagine border taxes (tolls, employment taxes, et cetera) funding those land purchases. One can imagine many things that are unrealistic. Cities cannot tax people outside their incorporated territory so this idea that they'll just tax people to death for living outside the city is unrealistic. They could certainly add tolls, but not at the volume that would be needed for this. And if they tried, the state legislature would doubtless swoop in and make it illegal. e.g., In Washington, road tolls can only be applied to road improvements (indeed only to improvements to the road being tolled). Any city that goes overboard trying to tax outsiders aggressively will just get shut down by the state. > But as the city buys and razes the writing will be on the wall. If that starts pushing down prices... This is pretty ridiculous. If the city starts reducing supply, costs will go up, not down. The purchasing scale needed to achieve this is insane. This would absolutely require many billions to achieve. Even if a city could manage to get their citizens to agree, and the state to allow it, and structure the burden so it falls on outsiders, it would still take decades to fund and execute, and in that time land value would go up due to the squeeze, making this more and more difficult for the city. > Though that would largely obviate the need for a green ring in the first place. This I agree on. City density won't be improved by preventing suburbs but by allowing more density.