Richard Florida: Urban Land Values Reflect Spatial Inequality

In CityLab, Richard Florida unpacks a study finding that the total value of urban land in the United States is over $25 trillion—"more than double the nation's total economic output or GDP in 2006." And nearly half that value is concentrated in just five major metropolitan areas: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, D.C., and Chicago.

As Florida notes, central land is more valuable than "average" land within a city—a gap that is significantly wider in the top five cities. In other words, "central land tends to grow more valuable in larger metros," perhaps because "the high price of central urban land is a byproduct of the clustering of economic activity that defines the urban revival."

There's more detail at CityLab. The bottom line, for Florida, is that "the study confirms something that is becoming increasingly obvious: Economic inequality is bad, but spatial inequality is even worse."