Comment by bjackman

That's still value that's inherent to the land, it's just that you destroy/create value when you change the boundaries of the property.

Land value is not supposed to be attached to what you use it for, but what you _could_ use it for. This is inherent to its location and the natural resources that are on/in it. (Plus, as I guess you have hinted, its shape and what it's adjacent to).

The idea of land value is to separate those inherent things, which weren't created by the owner, from the things they actually did create.

The main things we are interested in here are exactly what I mentioned:

- Land in NYC is valuable because it's in NYC. Landlords didn't create that value so we want to stop them capturing rent on it (while allowing/encouraging them to capture rent on the expensive buildings they fund)

- Some land has oil under it. Private individuals shouldn't be able to get rich just be owning that oil, they didn't create it (but they _should_ be able to get rich by funding drilling projects, if it satisfied a demand).