These principles are universal. Our immediate concern, however, must be to ensure their application where we have the political authority, namely within the United Kingdom. We use the term land to mean the material universe apart from man and his products. The value of land is of course influenced by such purely natural factors as the terrain, soil type, climate, and minerals. It is,though, the presence and activity of the population as a whole which actually confer differential values on sites.
Land value is determined by the demand for living and working space.
It measures the advantages of a particular piece of land over that of the poorest land in use. Land values are affected by the provision of services such as water, gas, and electricity. They are protected by the police, the fire and hospital services, and flood control. The individual landowner, in his capacity as owner of land, clearly is powerless to create his own land value, although if he were also to exert labour or provide capital he would, in those distinctly different roles, play his small part as a member of the larger community. The landowner as such, though, performs no useful function.