Jim Wamsley raises an important point with respect to the application of Henry George in his comment on “Shades of Henry George” posted yesterday.
Wamsley suggests the application of “concentric areas.” In the context of Regional Metrics we call these “Radius Bands.”
This tactic for application of Henry George would work well for small, isolated urban agglomerations that do not exceed the scale of an Alpha Community –25,000 to 200,000 population depending on the distance the agglomeration is from the nearest large New Urban Region(s).
Simple concentric areas / Radius Bands will not work for the application of Henry George in larger agglomerations, especially for large New Urban Regions or their subregions. A discussion of this idea may, however, help some grasp the importance of a Comprehensive Conceptual Framework for understanding functional human settlement patterns.
In larger urban agglomerations such as the Virginia portion of the National Capital Subregions (population 2.2 million +/- ) one must also use place “concentric areas” / Radius Bands around the Core of each Alpha or Beta Community, the Core of each Alpha or Beta Village – especially if the Village-scale agglomeration has at its Core a shared-vehicle system station.
At S/PI we believe it would be necessary to have a set of Radius Bands around the Core of each Alpha or Beta Neighborhood and perhaps around the Cores of some Alpha or Beta Clusters.
These rings of differing urban intensity / flux would be overlapping (any given site in five or six different Bands) and thus very difficult to calibrate for a Henry George tax application.
It would be better to follow the Three-Step Process outlined in Handbook and sketched out in The Shape of Richmond’s Future,” 16 Feb 2004 at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com.
Even with the Radius Band / concentric area technique, there is still the need for a Clear Edge between the Urbanside and the Countryside.
The application of “Reverse Henry George” as summarized by Jim Bacon in the original posting would be useful in the context of our notes although Henry George purists hate the idea with the passion of True Believers.
We recognize that those who are in denial about the organic structure of human settlement pattern and / or who hope to profit from the further scatteration of urban land uses across the Countryside (the creation of dysfunctional human settlement patterns) will attempt to obfuscate reality.
EMR