Decentralize America: The case for cities that don't need Washington

Cities should be richer than the federal government. Mayors should matter more than the president.

This is part of “Let Cities Build Utopia,” an 11-part series on the future of cities. Collect the complete series as a print pamphlet, digital pamphlet, or audiobook. 👇🏻

If we want to create more utopian cities, we should borrow from the models we’ve explored so far in this series.

Communities should buy cities (Scaling Eigg)

Eigg and Stornoway, alongside 500 community-owned territories in Scotland, have created Ebenezer Howard’s Garden Cities at scale, as well as given us a path to create a whole lot more of them. In the year 2000, only 52,354 hectares were community-owned in Scotland, but today 208,597 hectares are community-owned.

That’s roughly 6,727 hectares a year being put into community trusts. Imagine what would happen if other countries decided to do the same?

Community right-to-buy laws are already under consideration in Wales and the UK, and could easily be implemented by countries worldwide as one after another creates a wave of community-owned neighborhoods, towns, and even cities!

We could create a world of self-sufficient micro sovereignties!

As in Scotland, if the United States passed community right-to-buy laws, localities with strong communities would convert first.

The island of Maui, for instance, already has several community land trusts that could be expanded this way. After fires demolished the city of Lahaina in 2023, a CLT was created to secure the land for locals before developers could buy it all up and build hotel chains. They’ve so far purchased 13 parcels, with Maui’s County Council authorizing up to $5 million to secure shorelines for permanent public use. The county will contribute another $3 million, with United Way contributing $1.5 million. This is in addition to the Na Hale O Maui Community Land Trust, which owns another 50 leasehold homes on the island. There’s no reason public dollars couldn’t be used to expand trusts and even purchase commercial properties, with hotels and tourist infrastructure paying land rents that support locals and local development, rather than private property owners on the island.

With community right-to-buy laws in place, islanders could even push for the right to own their islands. The Hawaiian island of Lanai, for one, is 98% owned by the billionaire Larry Ellison who owns most of the island’s commercial buildings—including two Four Seasons hotels—and serves as a landlord to most residents. Why shouldn’t islanders organize a Lanai Trust that could express interest in the property, and raise public funds to purchase it on behalf of residents if he or an heir puts it up for sale? If the island eventually becomes abandoned, neglected, or harmful to the community, the trust could be granted eminent domain to force the sale.

Just as Scotland helped Eigg buy itself back from its billionaire owner, the United States could help Lanai become community-owned. It would be an Eigg revival!

Even without public funds, communities around the world could form trusts and buy themselves up—this could even be how we save main streets! Towns like Bozeman, Montana; Bend, Oregon; Ashland, Oregon, or Brigham City, Utah could establish trusts that slowly buy up Main Street real estate as well as surrounding residential areas, and support their town’s local economy through land rents. Cruise ship ports or tourist towns like Vail, Park City, Aspen, and Jackson Hole could start with Community Land Trusts that ensure affordable housing for locals, even as they expand to buy up all the tourist infrastructure that could fund local infrastructure, not hotel chains that own all the land.

Where land has been destroyed, as in the fires of Los Angeles, the community could buy the land together and decide for themselves what they want to do with it. Where land has become depopulated, communities could collectively purchase and develop it for their use. New Orleans has the highest vacancy rate with 22.9% of homes abandoned. Detroit isn’t far behind with 21.9%. A trust could aggregate the land and develop business and residential districts just like Sen̓áḵw, with skyscrapers and infrastructure and affordable long-term leases that might attract businesses to move in and revive residential communities. The same could be done in depopulating cities like Cleveland, Baltimore, Buffalo, Gary, and Youngstown.

We could convert a lot of the world’s land to autonomous communities this way, and even speed up the process by eliminating some of Scotland’s constraints. Scottish communities must have funding ready the second land goes for sale, a constraint that makes adoption difficult. A public land bank could fix that by funding projects upfront and allowing communities to assume ownership over time, drastically increasing uptake.

At its current rate, Scotland would be 70% community owned in 1,000 years, but with innovations that encourage community ownership, 70% of nations could feasibly become community-owned in the next 200-300 years!

Investors should fund cities (Scaling Letchworth)

If development groups like California Forever want to buy up land and build new cities, we should let them do that… on the condition that the land is held in a trust on behalf of residents and community stakeholders. Investors can still invest in a “California Forever Trust” and earn (capped) dividends from land leases. The trust can still master-plan a new city with expansive residential communities and a walkable park network. But residents and businesses inherit the town and ultimately benefit from its long-term economic growth, not private property developers who sell it all off to private commercial and residential owners.

I’d imagine the state of California would have been much more willing to grant autonomy to California Forever if the land was held in a trust on behalf of Solano residents. The city initially withdrew a ballot measure that would have allowed the city to bypass zoning restrictions, and residents have picketed the development, attempting to block the organization from purchasing their farmland. But if the land was given back to the community, just as Cadbury donated Bournville to a community trust, why not grant the city zoning control—residents could earn land rents for it and become self-sufficient, and would benefit from the city’s development and growth!

Not only that, but by putting the city in a trust, it would become immortal, able to survive centuries without political backlash, just like Bournville, rather than becoming another suburb for wealthy property owners.

Privately developed paradises around the world could do the same. We know from history: The trust is one of the most sustainable and resident-benefitting forms of governance cities can use. It should be a condition of their autonomous development!

Cities should own land (Scaling Vienna)

Cities should own land, just like Vienna and Singapore. Some cities are achieving this by building from scratch, Battery Park in Manhattan, for example, or the state-owned city of The Point in Utah. We need much more of these.

Closed prisons are actually a great place to build them. New York has closed more than 20 prisons in the last 15 years, and recently proposed closing another five. Since the year 2000, 21 states have closed at least one correctional facility, and all of them have established commissions to figure out what to do with a bevy of state-owned properties.

Why not make them all cities—built on city-owned land?

So far, New York and Massachusetts are planning to sell the land to private developers, which is a missed opportunity. Only California is taking advantage—the state’s Surplus Land Act prioritizes public land for affordable housing, and a separate Excess Sites program identifies excess state-owned property for housing projects. The state even launched an interactive map of state properties, and developing entities can receive long-term ground leases from the state to build housing on them.

All of these states, however, should give the land to the city.

If there’s one thing we know from the long history of city building, it’s that cities that own their own land are much better off—they can master plan depending on the needs of the city, and have a revenue source that can fund its wellbeing for centuries. Almost every city built by a larger state or national government failed as they appropriated city earnings for state and national use, and future politicians ceased investment in the cities they built to save taxpayers’ money.

Where cities and communities already have land sovereignty, they should use land rents to develop a revenue source, like Sen̓áḵw. Many Native American tribes already control large plots of contiguous land with sovereignty over zoning and building, as well as the ability to generate land rents through it. Why shouldn’t those tribes create a bunch of Sen̓áḵws around the country The Cahuilla Band of Indians in and around Palm Springs might be the best-positioned to do so. They already lease land to hotels, apartments, and commercial buildings, and could expand with residential communities and mixed-use development they don’t have to ask permission to build. Tribes near Seattle, Tacoma, Scottsdale, and other urban centers could do the same with the help of capped investors.

Cities should have tax autonomy (Scaling Georgism)

Where cities do not own land, states should at least grant them tax autonomy. Cities should be able to earn a profit, and use those funds for the benefit of residents.

San Francisco, New York, Chicago, and major metropolitan areas with expensive real estate are unlikely to be purchased by trusts or owned by the state in the next 100 years. That means the world’s largest cities will continue to be owned and run by thousands of private property holders, not to mention a host of state and federal interests, rendering them unable to master-plan or invest in a better future for residents.

We already know the solution to that: Either municipalities should have tax autonomy, as in the Basque Country and Switzerland. Or they should be able to use property taxes that way, via Georgism.

If cities do not own their land, residents should still benefit from it.

Cities already earn revenue through property taxes, and they still work just as they did in George’s time—taxing both land and buildings, with heavy caps that ensure cities can’t earn more revenue even as land values soar. Now there are movements to give cities much more control: Pennsylvania has already split property taxes in two, assessing the land value and the building value separately. Several US states are trying to do the same, including New York, Colorado, New Hampshire, Virginia, and Washington.

If we split property taxes in two, cities can raise land taxes even as they decrease building taxes. Even if overall property taxes remain the same for residential owners, this one step would make unused land too expensive to own and push speculative owners to either develop or sell. Owners who choose to build would increase the wellbeing of our cities—studies show that Pennsylvania cities build 13% more housing and start 12% more businesses where they have split-rate property taxes. They also improve old buildings or replace them with ones that can house more people, just as Singapore does. Owners who choose to sell could create community-owners faster.

As cities grow and develop, and the urban core becomes more valuable, the city earns more rent to invest in the community.

San Francisco, for example, could become entirely self-sufficient. The city’s budget was $15.9 billion in 2025, with roughly $3 billion of that coming from state and federal transfers, and about $4 billion coming from property taxes. At a modest 5% annual land rent, the city could raise $25–30 billion per year—nearly twice its current budget—while eliminating the need for state and federal grants.¹ With that money, the city could buy land, develop comprehensive transit structures, or fund housing developments for police officers, nurses, and teachers that would allow the city to finally have the staff it needs to effectively maintain the city.

Cities should earn the bulk of tax revenue (Scaling the Basque Country)

Raising land taxes is not enough. Cities, after all, can’t raise taxes too much without also decreasing state and federal taxes. Our overall tax burden would be too high!

That’s why we also need state tax reform. And here we must ask: If cities across the country have tax autonomy and use that revenue for the benefit of their residents, what might we need state and national governments for?

I tend to lean toward Howard’s most radical and ideological bent: If the whole country is a bunch of self-sufficient cities, then states and nations can be much lighter weight. Here I would model a form of Georgism meets the Basque Country: Cities earn money from land rents, states control all other forms of taxation, and states remit a percent of their economy to the federal government.

If the city earns land rents, it would be able to support everything it needs without state and federal grants—including housing, hospitals, schools, transportation, robust master-planning with green space, beautiful architecture, and city design. If the state controls all other taxation—including income taxes, corporate taxes, and sales taxes—US states would be able to support social services like healthcare and education and social security, as well as law enforcement and courts, just as EU countries do.

If states remit a percent of their economies to the federal government, just as EU countries remit a percent of their economies to the EU, it could fund national defense, foreign policy, currency and central banking, international coordination, as well as higher law enforcement and courts. Personally, I would start the remittance at 17-20%, so the federal government can still operate on its current budget during the transition period. Over time, as the nation pays off its debts and hands social welfare programs like Social Security over to the states, the federal remittance could become much smaller, perhaps only a 5-10% allotment.

As in Switzerland, this would make cities and states the richest and most important governing bodies in our lives, and the federal government would become much smaller.

It would also mean city mayors and state governors become the more important governing bodies in our lives—not the US president—and this is something we have the voting power to affect. In this future, the city and state get way more money and autonomy, and the nation gets much less. This would disrupt a large federal government that tries, and fails, to be everything to everyone, and replaces it with something much closer to what America’s founding fathers once imagined: Fiscally autonomous city-states supported by lighter-weight states, and an even lighter-weight nation.

In a world of self-sufficient cities, we would create many different kinds of utopia—the island of Eigg is very different from the cities of Bournville or Vienna or Singapore—that’s the point. Our local communities should represent the needs and wants and desires of the people who live in them, not property developers who extract that benefit for themselves or governments far away from us who can’t create the ideal life for everyone.

Cities need autonomy.

Autonomy should benefit residents.

That’s how we create utopia.

Thanks for reading Let Cities Build Utopia. This is the final installment of the series!

Special thanks to the Center for Land Economics who supported this series as a patron. I highly recommend their newsletter “Progress & Poverty,” which was invaluable to my research.

1. We do not know what San Francisco’s land would be assessed at if buildings were excluded, but urban land economists estimate that land accounts for roughly 60–70% of total assessed property value in high-demand cities. Applied to San Francisco, that implies $500–600 billion in land value alone.