Downtowns. What of taxes?

The same CBC article (Group seeks ways to revive downtown Moncton, topic of last post) has also drawn out comments about imbalanced taxes when comparing the suburbs to downtowns. 

I know there is a business improvement area fee in many downtowns, but what else is at play here.  I suppose land is more valuable, due to denser development. 

Still, if being downtown is less desirable than it once was, perhaps assessments could go down in the future. 

Presumably an identical building downtown and in the non-central city would have similar assessments, and similar tax rates (excluding BIA fees).