Department Chair

Dr. Laurie Buonanno

Date of Award

12-2015

Access Control

Open Access

Department

Political Science Department

Advisor

Dr. Laurie Buonanno

First Reader

Dr. Kenneth Stone

Second Reader

Dr. Laurie Buonanno

Abstract

Municipalities largely rely upon property taxes to fund their operations. They also have a great deal of control over the types of developments permitted within their jurisdiction. Different development types have different levels of value and it is important that municipalities understand the relative values of each development type in order to make an informed decision as to what they should permit to be built within their jurisdiction. This study tests the theory that urban/new-urbanist type developments are more valuable than suburban types and thus provide greater property tax revenues to the municipality by comparing various commercial building development types to the property tax assessment per acre of those developments, while controlling for myriad variables. The quantitative measures utilized were developed from various governmental sources including Geographic Information Systems. A hedonic pricing model was developed and tested through the use of multiple regression. The researcher found that urban development types provided a higher assessed value per acre than suburban development types. The results imply that municipalities should encourage more urban type commercial developments as opposed to suburban type commercial developments in order to maximize the property tax payoff of such developments.

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