Image: Bob Jagendorf via Flickr

For over a century, Pennsylvania has undertaken a quiet experiment. It is one of the only U.S. states where cities are allowed to tax land at a higher rate than the buildings on it. Pittsburgh and Scranton adopted this tax system in 1913, and roughly a dozen other cities have followed suit since the 1950s. This Pennsylvania Experiment has a lot to teach us about how taxes shape the behavior of property owners.

Most people think of the Keystone State as “East” just like New York or Massachusetts. Part of it is, but west of the Tuscarora Tunnel the traveler finds small towns and cities surrounded by miles of Appalachian Mountains and a few farms in the open lowlands.

These cities powered the US from the beginning of the Civil War until the end of World War II.  When the steel industry finally collapsed in the mid to late seventies, these towns lost people, businesses and tax base. As in much of the country, people and commerce pulled out, and built anew, sometimes only a couple of miles away.

Read the whole article at Strong Towns.