In the past decade, the fields of Urban Planning and Epidemiology have gloriously been crossing paths both in academia and amongst practitioners. Innovations such as health impact statements (HIS) in land use and rezoning requests is one benefit of this cross-discipline pollination. After a decade-long comparison of vacant lots and improved lots, a University of Pennsylvania study
-> Continue reading Science meet Vacant Lots – Urban Health Watch
Recently, Virginia Tech’s Metropolitan Institute sported a blog post about it’s Associate Director, Joseph Schilling and Alan Mallach of the Brookings Institution attendance at APA’s annual conference promoting their Cities in Transition Guide. You can read all about it on the MI’s blog here: “Cities in Transition: A Guide for Practicing Planners“
A slow process of out-migration, loss of jobs, loss of population and the recent housing crisis has left cleveland with a host vacant homes, approximately 13,000. Due to rehabilation costs exceeding potential sales prices and a mis-match in productive (land/economic) uses, nearly 80% of these vacant homes make fiscal sense to demolitish. This has left the city and remaining neighborhoods
-> Continue reading Raze the roof – Cleveland’s tear-it-down approach
Growth and development in Chicago’s suburbs and exurbs has stalled since the housing downturn. According to Census Bureau, Chicago’s surrounding areas were some of the fastest growing in the country until 2009/2010, and after which they’ve claimed the title of holding Illinois’ top foreclosure rates. Many of Chicago’s far-flung housing developments were the hardest hit by the
-> Continue reading Chicago Exurbs See a Bust After a Long Boom
Community residents throughout the country have seen properties abandoned and subjected to negligence. Hundreds of these deteriorated properties are owned by banks – Bank of America and Wells Fargo, among others. And although, these banks claim they strive to comply with property codes and act upon foreclosure policies “that aim to protect properties and communities,”
-> Continue reading The Public Protests Deterioration of Bank-Owned Vacant Property