Compact development patterns provide immense social and economic value to our cities. One element of economic value is the "productivity" of urban space from a tax perspective, a measure of which is the amount of taxable revenue per unit of area. This is by no means the only measure of the value of compact development, nor in many cases the most important element; however, it is a very helpful indicator of the efficiency of different types of development patterns from an infrastructure perspective, and also provides insights into which parts of a city are the most efficient contributors to a city's tax base.
Inspired directly by similar analyses done in other cities, I measured this dynamic in Anchorage by using ArcGIS Pro to visualize the taxable and appraised value per acre of every parcel in the city. The effort initially involved cleaning up the city's 2019 property tax records, both for use in this type of analysis and to ensure the data was accurate. The resulting visualization clearly shows how productive downtown Anchorage is when compared to the less compact development patterns in other parts of the city.
This work was done as part of a wider effort to address Anchorage's downtown zoning districts while working as a Senior Planner with the Municipality.
