The Proximity Principle

Vacant lands are often viewed as the waste products of a city. As they have outgrown their prior use, current land owners speculate that the land value will increase through time and become more valuable. Vacant urban lands typically have a low annual tax burden so there is incentive for the landowner to hold onto the lot (Albert Hartheimer, Affordable Housing and the Land Value Tax Perspective, 2014). But there is another advantage to keeping open green space within communities: property values increase when they are located close to a green space. In the past few decades there have been numerous research articles that support this claim, and John Crompton of Texas A&M University calls this the Proximity Principle. In Crompton’s 2007 article in Leisure Studies (Volume 63, No. 1), he writes that “communities are often confronted with the difficult decision of land use development. Often the assumption is that developing the land for residential homes offers more revenue to the community than developing parks and open spaces. Several factors show that this assumption is in error. The evidence shows that preserving open space can be a less expensive alternative to development.” He concludes that maintaining open space does not take away from a community but is instead an integral part of its economic health.