West Coast baby
Anytime you have people living in dense, highly populated areas it will make nearby land a premium. High demand for land (and the resulting high prices) will result in high rent and high cost of living.
I’m not really sure how to fix this. You could have some government managed system for what businesses get the high demand land, but that will result in less popular stores being in the best locations and greatly incentivize corruption as businesses want highly profitable locations that can only be granted by politicians.
To fix this that kind of development has to be far more normalized. A big part that drives up those land values is because that style of development is both rare and desirable. If it becomes desirable, common,and meets housing/commercial needs, the market will become more competitively priced.
Japan has declining population, unlike basically every county in the world.
Actually, at some point the graph flips around. If everywhere is fairly dense, less dense areas go for a premium (rich people hate living near poor people).
But you can’t make Everywhere dense in the USA - have you looked at the size of the land? It’s huge and mostly uninhabited
Considering the price of home ownership near city centers, I’ll call bullshit on that one.
I have a lot of suggestions, but one that I think you’d find particularly interesting is land tax rates.
This video is 46 minutes, but it’s the mayor of Detroit explaining why low taxes on land incentivize blight and abandonment instead of productive use.