Resolving Vacancy: promoting urban vitality

Challenges remain for redeveloping vacant land. Community and city based organizations often attack the source with singular approaches. Instead, a more comprehensive approach should address a strategy to implement, while balancing the social, political, and environmental ramifications. In most cases, the main goal of city officials is to work for the community’s interests and well being. 

    Bowman and Pagano list three imperatives that influence cities’ decisions within the U.S. federal system:
 

    1.    the need to enhance the city’s fiscal state;
    2.    the need to limit social disruption and protect property values;
    3.    the need to maintain and enhance the community image6.
 

However, their actions are determined by other constraints both internal and external to city affairs. Actions on vacant properties are influenced by the context and setting. Cities can use vacancy to generate revenue, define communities, or enhance existing conditions.
 

    Cities may treat vacant land as a tax generating property. However, some developments may generate more revenue than others. For instance, a commercial storefront selling higher priced goods like jewelry may produce more tax revenue than a coffee shop. Maximizing revenue for the city, the “land-tax dynamic”, thus becomes a key strategy in deciding any vacancy outcome7.
 

    Vacant lots also serve as social indicators of defining neighborhoods – separating areas along income and class lines. Acting as social buffers, vacancy can protect property values by allowing groups to cluster together. Such is the case with New York City’s Central Park and its border properties8. City policy may dictate vacancy as planned parks, open space, or transportation corridors9. Therefore, the social makeup resulting from a city intervention should factor in any changes made.
 

    Finally, the act of developing vacant properties can improve a city’s image. Cities may appropriate public funds for generating economic activity – either through subsidization for developers, improved infrastructure, or other public works related projects that would encourage additional development. Chicago’s opening of Millennium Park resulted from the development of a downtown blighted eyesore - the transformation of exposed railroad tracks into a multifunctional public park. Its construction enhanced the city by providing additional public space, while drawing additional tourist traffic to its downtown lakefront with world-class architecture and art. The economic effects are both immediate - an improved streetscape - and long term – providing the opportunity to compete economically with other cities10.
 

    Overall, a city’s reaction to vacancy will address a combination of the three imperatives mentioned above – allowing for a sound fiscal position, providing social stability for its neighborhoods, and developing economic viability. 

6 Bowman, Ann O’M and Michael A. Pagano. “Vacant Land in Cities: An Urban Resource”. (The Brookings Institution, December 2000), 35.

7 Bowman, Ann O’M and Michael A. Pagano. “Vacant Land in Cities: An Urban Resource”. (The Brookings Institution, December 2000), 40-41.

8 Harden, Blaine. “Neighbors Give Central Park A Wealthy Glow”. New York Times, 22 November 1999.

9 Bowman, Ann O’M and Michael A. Pagano. “Vacant Land in Cities: An Urban Resource”. (The Brookings Institution, December 2000), 44.

10 Bowman, Ann O’M and Michael A. Pagano. “Vacant Land in Cities: An Urban Resource”. (The Brookings Institution, December 2000), 44-45.