Is that the problem though? Empty land held by speculators?
That said, "everybody works but the vacant lot" is a Georgist slogan that has been seen on billboards before now: https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47de-036a-a3d9...
You decide if the above is good or bad.
Something like 90% of boomers want to age in place (as opposed to moving in with family, or moving into some assisted living arrangement). This is a problem when that effectively locks up 40% of the housing stock.
Does this "little old lady" need a 1-acre lot for her gardening when she can barely walk to the end of it and back? Or could that lot be parceled up into 4 single-family homes, or dozens of apartment units?
Also: that small house will grow in value (along with the property taxes) until the value of the land almost entirely dominates. My parents are in one such situation -- anyone who would buy their house would assuredly tear it down to build something bigger.
However it’s just not compatible with any concept of freedom, as understood by those people themselves. A lot of people have an expectation of fairness that they ought to be able to own a home of their choosing and stay in it until they’re ready to move (or dead). And they are sentimentally attached to their homes where they raised their children.
We in the West have a society whose framework is roughly aligned with that idea. We could change it, but it would require lots of other “the government knows best” policies, and ultimately the massive empowerment of police to enforce those “best practices” when people object. Even one would agree with the outcomes in housing policy, it would be pretty risky to create that kind of totalitarian situation in general, because we might not like the other “most efficient best practices.”
Edit: by money I mean income. She owns her house because years ago she (with her now dead husband) at one time had enough income to buy and pay off the house. Now that she is retired she has much less income despite having assets like a house that are in theory worth a lot of money that cannot be accessed.
It always seemed crazy to me that nothing was done on that very valuable corner for so long.
There are other examples.
I’m new to town but everyone else tells me that the area has massively improved in the last 5 years. Those lots are wasted potential.