Vacant Land
Oakland property prices have gone way up, but vacant land can be found all over the city. Hayley Raetz argues getting development on this land should be a policy priority.
Terner Center for Housing Innovation
All that empty acreage means that these big, rapidly developing cities don’t really have to sprawl.
CommercialCafe
When Wolverine Human Services bought 11 acres of East Detroit planning to remove abandoned houses for a U-Pick Orchard, neighbors protested. Now they've pivoted and aim to provide a resource to the community rather than run an agro-business.
Next City
An interactive map from Chicago Cityscape shows all of the city's parking lots, vacant spaces, and city-owned land. Not all of it is truly vacant, or developable, but the map shows how much scope remains for new construction.
Chicago Cityscape
The 596 Acres project to catalogue and improve vacant, publicly owned lots in New York City produced another great tool called the Urban Reviewer, which gathers all of New York's adopted neighborhood master plans in one place.
CityLab
Britain's opposition Labour Party is promising to tackle the country's housing crisis as a centerpiece of its next election campaign. A proposed “use it or lose it” law aimed at forcing developers to build on fallow land is causing controversy.
Next City
One theme unites the winners of the My LA2050 competition: a desire to reinvigorate Los Angeles’s vacant and underused spaces.
Curbed LA
Blog post
I don’t know what it is about New Orleans that makes me wax rhapsodic. But something about the city makes everyday life look poetic. I returned to the Crescent City last week after having last visited just seven months ago, when a tree planting
A new project is opening in San Francisco that utilizes a vacant piece of land for a temporary retail installation using shipping containers.
The Architect's Newspaper
Cleveland, Ohio has pursued an aggressive policy of greening it vacant and underused land. A program called Garden Boyz employs local youth to tend the gardens, keeping the landscape vital and keeping the kids out of gangs.
Next American City
A new plan being pursued by the City of San Francisco would allow developers with projects stalled by the economic recession hold on to their development rights as long as they make some beneficial use of the vacant land until construction starts.
San Francisco Chronicle
Feature
With the auto industry struggling and car dealerships closing shop, what future do you see for empty car lots? Vote on ideas submitted by the Planetizen community, or suggest your own.
