Vacant Land Stewardship Archives | Center for Community Progress

Community Progress regularly posts to this blog on a range of related topics to help communities across the country turn vacant spaces into vibrant places. Please check back regularly, and sign up for our newsletter to receive the latest news directly in your inbox.

Transforming Cleveland Vacant Lots into an Urban Farm

How the Cuyahoga Land Bank and a community activist worked together to transform a block one property at a time.

Vacant Land is More Than a Single Lot—it’s a System.

Conceptualizing vacant land as a system makes it possible to identify where strategic interventions can push the system toward different, more desirable outcomes.

What Causes “Urban Prairies” in Shrinking Cities?

As cities shrink, once-urban land becomes available for other uses or reverts to nature, leading to the phenomenon of “urban prairies.”

The Problem with Calling Neighborhoods with Vacant Properties “Blighted”

Picture a neighborhood with numerous run-down homes, vacant lots, and boarded-up buildings, grounds or structure overgrown with vegetation. What word comes to mind to describe those conditions? For many, that word is “blight.” Blight is a shorthand term many people use to refer to properties they perceive as problematic in…

How Vacant and Abandoned Buildings Affect the Community

Vacant, abandoned, and deteriorated (VAD) properties—referred to by some as “blighted properties”—pose significant costs to public health, property values, local taxpayers, and more.

Resident Engagement in Vacant Lot Greening: Empowering Communities for Neighborhood Revitalization

This is an excerpt of Chapter 11 of Tackling Vacancy and Abandonment: Strategies and Impacts After the Great Recession, jointly produced by the Center for Community Progress, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. It has been lightly edited and condensed for the web….

Approaches to Rural Property Vacancy in Law and Policy

This is an excerpt of Chapter 8 of Tackling Vacancy and Abandonment: Strategies and Impacts After the Great Recession, jointly produced by the Center for Community Progress, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. It has been lightly edited and condensed for the web….

How Community Progress Celebrated #LoveThatLot in 2022

In 2022, we celebrated Valentine’s Day with another #LoveThatLot, a social media campaign to show our love for the people and organizations turning vacant lots into vibrant places. Neighborhood Gardens Trust shared how they preserved 50 community gardens throughout Philadelphia. The City of Portland Bureau of Environmental Services shared how…

Communities Across the US Are Addressing Property Deterioration and Vacancy With ARPA

States, Tribes, counties, and municipalities around the country have been hard at work determining how to use their allocations from the American Rescue Plan Act’s $350 billion State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund – which we often clumsily abbreviate as the ARPA SLFRF. Every unit of government should have already received at least the first…

A Pioneering Approach to Bring a Legacy of Quality, Affordable Housing to Communities

Communities nationwide struggle with inventories of properties that are causing harm—properties that are vacant, abandoned, and deteriorated (VAD). Often these properties are concentrated in areas where an intentional history of racist policies resulted in disinvestment and denied homeownership for many Black families—a loss of wealth that has compounded across several generations. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated these racial disparities and community…

How the Cuyahoga Land Bank and a community activist worked together to transform a block one property at a time.

Conceptualizing vacant land as a system makes it possible to identify where strategic interventions can push the system toward different, more desirable outcomes.

As cities shrink, once-urban land becomes available for other uses or reverts to nature, leading to the phenomenon of “urban prairies.”

Vacant, abandoned, and deteriorated (VAD) properties—referred to by some as “blighted properties”—pose significant costs to public health, property values, local taxpayers, and more.