The Use of Land in Cities

Charles Abrams Scientific America September 1965. ...This is strictly free-enterprise, profit-motive tool, so perhaps I had better start off by loudly affirming my personal faith in free enterprise and the profit motive. By and large don’t think there can be any substitute for free enterprise and the profit motive when it comes to satisfying a multiplicity of similar but not identical human needs. And, specifically there can be no substitute for free enterprise in meeting a problem as unbelievably complicated as the problem of urban development. When we find a notorious example where free enterprise and the profit motive have failed to meet a complex human need, I believe very strongly that-before we decide to ask the Government to step in and use tax dollars to do the job- we should first try to find out why private enterprise failed in this particular case and see if we cannot eliminate the cause of its failure. Comment So when governments subsidize the particular ownership of one site by granting differential charges, exemptions, minimum rates to others, the effect of which is to change the behavior of the whole rate paying community in ways. That they do not monitor.