Vacant Land Elements Examples
Vacant land stewardship requires four fundamental elements: knowing your community’s context, having clear goals and plans, committing to collaboration, and enacting facilitative policies. These four elements will look different in every community, but they are all critical components of implementing successful vacant land stewardship. To learn more about these elements and discover some next steps for your community's learning journey, explore the element examples below.
Element Type
Organization
Detroit Future City
The Field Guide to Working with Lots provides step-by-step instruction for 38 landscape designs on vacant lots.
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Monroe County
Monroe County Vacant and Abandoned Property Task Force engages a network of local government and community leaders and partners to work collaboratively to tackle the negative impacts of vacant, abandoned, and tax-delinquent properties and develop strategies to return them to productive use.
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Wilmington Alliance
The Wilmington Alliance is a collaborative organization aimed at community wealth creation and neighborhood revitalization.
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City of Beatrice
The City of Beatrice, Nebraska runs a Mow-to-Own Program that allows adjacent homeowners, individuals, and developers to acquire city-owned vacant lots after proving they are capable, willing, and consistent with maintaining it.
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Tri-COG Land Bank
The Tri-COG Land Bank offers adjacent homeowners the opportunity to expand their yard through their Side Lot Development Program.
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City of Philadelphia
The City of Philadelphia provides a path to license, lease, and purchase land from the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority (PRA), the Department of Public Property, and the Philadelphia Housing Development Corporation (PHDC) and supports the use of vacant land for urban agriculture that improves the quality of life in the City.
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Grounded PGH (Formerly GTECH)
The Northside Vacant Lot Assessment collected information on the condition of vacant lots in Pittsburgh’s 19 Northside neighborhoods. The assessment was conducted by resident volunteers and community organizations.
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City of Buffalo
The Love Your Block Mini-Grant Program offers small grants to neighborhood-based organizations in our target areas for volunteer projects that address vacant, abandoned, and deteriorated properties.
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City of Harrisburg
The City of Harrisburg’s Adopt-A-Lot program allows people to “adopt” city-owned vacant lots for the purpose of maintaining and beautifying them.
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Land + Water WORKS Coalition
The Land + Water WORKS Coalition is a collective of environmental stewards dedicated to a more equitable, more climate-resilient future for Detroit through research, education, outreach, technical assistance, installation, and advocacy.
Read More »Cornell University Legal Constructs Lab
The National Zoning Atlas enables users to visualize the prevalence and nature of regulatory constraints, particularly on housing. The Zoning Atlas is an important tool to help people understand what their local zoning codes say; compare codes across jurisdictions, illuminate regional and statewide trends, and strengthen national planning for housing production, transportation infrastructure, and climate response.
Read More »City of Danville
The City of Danville zoning ordinance provides a number of useful tools for vacant lot development, including allowing urban gardening in most districts with a special permit, and creating a designation for districts where new development will infill parcels with vegetation and landscaping.
Read More »Grandmont Rosedal Development Corporation
The Grandmont Rosedale Development Corporation (GRDC)’s Vacant Property Task Force is a resident-led initiative to target and prevent blight and vacancy in the five neighborhoods GRDC serves. Working closely with resident volunteers, the task force monitors vacant homes with the goal of ensuring that every property is properly maintained.
Read More »City of Baltimore
Open Baltimore is an online data portal that provides the public with access to hundreds of datasets and interactive dashboards, including a Vacant Building Dashboard. The Vacant Building Dashboard shares data on the number of vacant building notices, building rehabs, and demolitions. The data can be sorted and filtered by geographic bounds, time increments, and even “housing market typology.”
Read More »Baltimore Environmental Equity Partnership (BEEP)
Baltimore Environmental Equity Partners (BEEP) aims to foster cross-sector collaboration to improve community and environmental well-being and sustainability in neighborhoods of East Baltimore. BEEP is comprised of nonprofit and government organizations working on community development, community organizing, environmental and health advocacy, and social justice.
Read More »Allegheny Green Web Collaboration
The Allegheny Green Web Collaboration is a network of more than 20 nonprofit recreation and conservation organizations with a vision for connected parks, open spaces, and trails throughout Allegheny County to enhance the quality of people’s daily lives, promote healthy living, and encourage increased engagement with nature. The collaboration manages a website providing an interactive narrative of their efforts.
Read More »PA Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and PA Downtown Center
Developed through a partnership between the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and the Pennsylvania Downtown Center this handbook provides strategies for communities to utilize their natural, outdoor recreational resources as assets to grow and enhance their community and economic development.
Read More »East Trenton Collaborative
The East Trenton Neighborhood (ETN) Brownfields Area-Wide Plan provides site-specific recommendations for 12 brownfield sites with an emphasis on two catalyst sites that have the greatest likelihood of development and impact. Cities dealing with high rates of vacant land and contamination may find this plan helpful in understanding the opportunities and challenges of putting properties back into productive use in a safe and healthy way.
Read More »Trenton Neighborhood Restoration Campaign
In 2014, the Trenton Neighborhood Restoration Campaign (TNRC) organized the first truly comprehensive, parcel-level survey of all the vacant properties in Trenton — mapped, published, and updated on this interactive website. The TNRC also organized residents and local groups to draw attention to the problems caused by vacant and abandoned properties.
Read More »Grounded in Philly
The Vacant Land 215 Toolkit is a guide for both new and current gardeners in Philadelphia looking to use land productively, understand how to gain legal access to City-owned vacant spaces for community food production or open space, or understand what legal protections are available for existing community gardens.
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