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Alaska is the U.S. state that has operated a permanent universal resource-rent dividend since 1982 through the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend, making it the leading real-world case study for Georgist and basic income researchers.
Australia has one of the world's longest continuous histories of land taxation, running from 1890s state land taxes through a 1910–1952 federal land tax to today's state land taxes and the Henry Tax Review's land-tax recommendations.
Vancouver taxed land only from 1910, and most BC municipalities followed suit by 1914, making the province an early single-tax stronghold — before a slow rollback that finished in 1984, with a partial echo today in BC's speculation and vacancy tax.
Canada is a country with significant economic rents from land and natural resources — estimated by Common Wealth Canada at ~$421B/year of newly collectible rent (January 2023 version), revised to ~$241B/year (~$194B from a national LVT) in the July 2023 Final version.
Australia's national capital was founded in 1911 on public leasehold, deliberately designed on Georgist lines to keep the 'unearned increment' in public hands — a design that was progressively undermined and largely abandoned by 1971.
A 34-storey London office tower left empty for nine years after its 1966 completion while developer Harry Hyams held out for a single tenant — a widely cited real-world case of speculative vacancy.
Chicago is the subject of Homer Hoyt's century-long case study of urban land values (1830–1933), documenting recurring boom-bust episodes in land prices — the founding empirical source for the Georgist 18-year land cycle thesis.
Denmark’s grundskyld (“ground duty”) is one of the developed world’s longest-standing land taxes — a recurrent levy assessed on land value, separate from and in addition to any tax on buildings.
Baltic nation that adopted a tax on land value with no tax on building improvements as part of its post-1991 reforms, making it one of the closest real-world implementations of Henry George’s proposal.
For roughly two decades after reunification, Germany avoided the house-price booms seen elsewhere, helped by strong tenant protections, a majority-renter market, and conservative Sparkassen/cooperative mortgage lending — a counterexample to the idea that land-price inflation is inevitable.
Pennsylvania’s capital and one of the most cited US examples of split-rate property taxation, taxing land at a higher rate than buildings for decades from the early 1980s during a period of significant urban revitalisation.
Hong Kong funds much of its government from land — the state owns all land and leases it, capturing land value as a primary public revenue source.
The largest US city with no formal zoning code — voters rejected zoning in 1948, 1962, and 1993 referenda. Land use is instead governed by private deed restrictions, and land prices rose sharply anyway, making Houston a standard counterpoint case to Portland's growth boundary.
Ireland's Celtic Tiger boom capitalised EU funding and cheap eurozone credit into land prices; the 2007-2010 crash produced one of Europe's steepest house-price declines and thousands of unfinished 'ghost estates,' reviving debate over a site value tax.
Jamaica converted its property tax base from capital value to unimproved land value in 1957, extending the system nationwide with a 1974 revaluation; site values reportedly fell sharply, though coverage was reduced by agricultural and hotel exemptions.
Japan funded Meiji-era industrialization with a national land value tax, then became the canonical modern land-cycle case study: a 1955-73 land boom and the 1986-91 bubble, whose collapse produced the Lost Decades.
Johannesburg taxed land value alone from around 1918-1919, one of the world's longest-running site-value-rating systems, cited by Fred Harrison as evidence against the claim that isolating land value is impossible — until South Africa's 2004 Municipal Property Rates Act shifted the country to a c...
The world's first Garden City (founded 1903 in Hertfordshire, England), built to Ebenezer Howard's plan of holding land in trust so that rising ground rents fund the town's own services rather than private landlords.
London is the UK's clearest case study in publicly created land value: major transit projects like the Jubilee Line Extension and Crossrail have generated tens of billions of pounds in largely uncaptured land value uplift.
A 2.1 km² city-state with no personal income tax and among the world's highest land prices — cited by Georgists as a stark case of tax savings capitalizing into land value rather than lowering the cost of living.
The Netherlands captures land-value gains chiefly through 'active municipal land policy' — cities acquiring, servicing, and reselling or leasing land themselves — plus near-universal developer-obligation charges, rather than through a land value tax.
Australian state with one of the world's longest-running land value taxes, levied since 1895 — part of Australia's strong historical Georgist tradition.
The single largest concentration of measured urban land value in the United States — roughly $2.5 trillion citywide — and the site of Henry George's own 1886 run for mayor.
New Zealand historically used land-value rating as a primary local government funding mechanism before gradually shifting to capital-value rating — making it a key case study for LVT research, including the Auckland amalgamation quasi-natural experiment.
Norway's Government Pension Fund Global—the world's largest sovereign wealth fund—captures oil-resource rents through a save-and-budget model, contrasting with Alaska's direct per-capita dividend distribution.
The US state whose enabling law let cities tax land and buildings at different rates — making it the natural laboratory for evidence on land value taxation.
Pittsburgh ran a split-rate property tax for most of the 20th century and sharply raised its land rate in 1979–80 — the setting for the most-cited US study of land taxation.
Portland's 1979 urban growth boundary is a widely cited natural experiment on land-use restriction: Fred Harrison argues speculation, not the boundary, drove Portland's price rises, while peer-reviewed research finds the boundary does raise undeveloped land values significantly.
In the 1990s, economist Dmitry Lvov proposed funding post-Soviet Russia from land and natural-resource rent instead of privatizing it; Yeltsin's government chose voucher privatization and the 1995 loans-for-shares scheme instead, creating Russia's oligarch class.
San Francisco is a flagship modern case for the land-driven housing crisis: land accounts for roughly 71% of average home value in the city, and its acute housing shortage has made it a recurring subject of land value tax proposals.
The dot-com era's epicentre, and Fred Harrison's case study for the claim that 'New Economy' technology gains were substantially absorbed as land rent rather than passed on as broad prosperity.
Singapore's model of large-scale state land ownership and long-term leasing captures land value for public benefit — a quasi-Georgist system credited in its development success.
South Africa has one of the world's longest municipal site-value-rating histories, running from the Transvaal Local Authority Rates Ordinance through the 2004 Municipal Property Rates Act, and a post-apartheid Katz Commission inquiry (1998–99) that examined and ultimately did not lead to a nation...
South Korea's Korea Land Corporation (merged into LH in 2009) developed land publicly at scale — a state-led alternative to a land value tax for capturing land value and supplying affordable serviced land.
Taiwan implements a Land Value Increment Tax rooted in Sun Yat-sen's 'equalization of land rights' — one of the most explicit national applications of Georgist principles in Asia.
A proposed planned city in the American desert, announced by billionaire Marc Lore in 2021, whose land ownership model — 'Equitism' — is explicitly based on Henry George's proposal that a community endowment, not private landowners, should hold and capture the appreciating value of land.
The German leasehold territory of Kiautschou (Tsingtao/Qingdao) ran a Georgist-style land and increment tax from 1898 to 1914 — the only state-like territory to adopt a full single tax on land, and a direct influence on Sun Yat-sen.
The UK anchors the Georgist historical record — parliamentary enclosure, the 1909 People's Budget, the 1947 planning settlement — and current data showing land at roughly three-fifths of national net worth amid a decades-long housing affordability crisis.
The country with the wiki's densest concentration of real-world Georgist experiments — Pennsylvania's split-rate cities, Alaska's resource-rent dividend, Henry George's own 1886 campaign, and the property-tax revolt of Proposition 13 — but no national land value tax.
From 1910 to 1984, Vancouver taxed land value only, exempting buildings from municipal property tax — a globally celebrated single-tax experiment whose multi-decade rollback, and modern echo in the Speculation and Vacancy Tax, remain touchstones in the LVT debate.