Land Value Mapping Training

Part 2 with Joshua Vincent, Director, Center for the Study of Economics

Wanted my substack subscribers to know about this, sorry so late to announce.

“The one who draws the map controls the territory.”

Starts 9:30 am EST Saturday November 16 here: 

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88138787195?pwd=Mb01Vgouxf4vy6gwICk0jfRpKOwCIS.1

Meeting ID: 881 3878 7195
Passcode: 710648

Land Value Taxation and Mapping: a Case Study

by land value mapping presenter Joshua Vincent

We are concerned about poverty and existential access to the land. In the last class, we demonstrated the power of maps to do several essential things:

1. Convey Information
2. Highlight a Problem
3. Tell a Story
4. Propose Solutions

The city we will go to work with is Danville, Virginia. Why Danville? Located in south-central Virginia along the North Carolina border, within a day’s drive of two-thirds of the nation’s population, Danville boasts historical landmarks, recreational opportunities, and beautiful rolling countryside. In the late 19th and continuing into the early 20th centuries, tobacco processing was a significant source of wealth for
business owners in the city, in addition to the textile mills. Wealthy planters and owners built fine houses, some of which have been preserved.

Danville is a city redolent with an eventful and sometimes dark history, perhaps best epitomized by the famous song “The Night They Drove Old Dixie down.”

“Virgil Caine is the name and I served on the Danville train, ‘till Stoneman’s cavalry came and tore up the tracks again. In the winter of ’65, we were hungry, just barely alive...”

In the late 20th century, the tobacco, textile, and railroad restructuring all had an adverse effect, resulting in the loss of many jobs in Danville. The decline in passenger traffic caused the Danville railroad station to fall into disuse.

In 2022, Danville, VA had a population of 42.5k people with a median age of 41 and a median household income of $41,484. The five largest ethnic groups in Danville, VA are Black or African American (Non-Hispanic) (49.9%), White (Non-Hispanic) (40.5%), Two+ (Non-Hispanic) (3.07%), Two+ (Hispanic) (2.46%), and White (Hispanic) (1.48%).

In 2022, the median property value in Danville, VA was $102,000, and the home-ownership rate was 49.5%.25.3% of the population for whom poverty status is determined in Danville, VA (10.4k out of 40.9k people) live below the poverty line, a number higher than the national average of 12.5%.

To prepare our thesis that a tax on land values would suit Danville, we need to look at the attached Excel spreadsheet, which shows patterns of value, homeownership, and the “state of the city.” Important things to know about data In the spreadsheet, we’ve already attached the GIS coordinates for the city, which were downloaded from
the city planning department.

Most places we want to work with have at least some data available; there are very few places (like North Korea) where data is either analog (on paper) or junk. It took about 20 minutes to find the data we would need from Danville. There were about eight sources that had either city-specific information or statewide.

I urge everybody to download and install Google Earth Pro.
https://www.google.com/earth/about/versions/#earth-pro4
I’ll walk you through it and provide you with a data set to download and run. It should take no more than 5 or 10 minutes. The entire planet is available