Thanks for making this article, Alex. I remember having this discussion with you a year ago. We both agree that UBI will free many people from having to live in expensive urban areas.

There are other benefits to living in an urban area than just jobs, though, and when an area increases in value because of the benefits of living close to other people, property owners are going to collect a lot of that value. So it’s still a speculation game with property owners trying to figure out which areas are going to gain the most value.

I think UBI is a good idea, but it doesn’t completely solve the problems of real-estate being used for its most productive purposes, and value accrued from people coming together to live in one place being distributed back to society.

How about adding to the UBI pool (or a supplemental dividend) with a tax on the unimproved value of urban land? Or, equivalently, an urban land trust that puts its rents into that pool?