In this age of intense metropolitan growth, city planners, lawyers and legislators are searching for ways to save some of the remaining open land near our larger cities. Two governmental powers have been pressed into action to prevent the urbanization of this land--the police power and the power of eminent domain. But there is also a third governmental power-the power to tax. Can property taxation methods be modified so as to encourage, rather than discourage the preservation of land in its undeveloped state? Professor Hagman feels they can, and in this article he explains the intricacies of various open land taxation schemes.
