The right incentive can be regulated to speed up or slow down economic growth, depending on the economic times. As we are all very aware, most American cities have been deteriorating for years and even decades, not even to consider centuries. The deterioration is due, in large part, to the mass exodus of the tax paying residential base. Prime property on which to build new homes, even now, is in high demand and always will be. Most new homes are being built further and further away from the inner city, only because that is the only vacant land still available.
Vacant land is less expensive to build on .
With the increasing distances goes the higher likelihood jobs will soon follow. The biggest problem is not that there isn't any land available in the inner cities. But, often, there are structures on the land and it is just too costly to remove them. So the old buildings remain, getting uglier every year, as a place from which to sell drugs, and the city must still maintain the streets, etc. A two pronged attack will start an avalanche of building activity and tax producing areas.