Blog
Vacant Land Stewardship
Cities spend millions each year cleaning up illegal dumping. What if they tried to make vacant lots less appealing to dumping in the first place?
Read More »A vacant lot owned and cared for by a land bank sees a greater decrease in crime compared to privately owned lots, finds 2023 study in Flint, MI.
Read More »How the Cuyahoga Land Bank and a community activist worked together to transform a block one property at a time.
Read More »Conceptualizing vacant land as a system makes it possible to identify where strategic interventions can push the system toward different, more desirable outcomes.
Read More »As cities shrink, once-urban land becomes available for other uses or reverts to nature, leading to the phenomenon of “urban prairies.”
Read More »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…
Read More »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.
Read More »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….
Read More »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….
Read More »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…
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