Vacant Properties
The city of St. Petersburg provides a model for transforming blight to a blessing.
Governing
Experts say China has the highest vacancy rate on residential units of any country in the world. The roots of the problem lay in housing speculation, according to China's leaders.
Bloomberg
So you bought a lot for $1 under the city of Chicago's Large Lots program. Expect your bills to go up a lot more than that measly sum.
Chicago Cityscape
Rochester, New York is launching the new Neighbors for Neighbors program.
WHEC
While the housing crisis of expensive coastal cities gets all the attention, many parts of the country are challenged with real estate markets that lack the stability to attract investments.
Forbes
Managed decline assumes that struggling cities will continue to struggle indefinitely. Is there a better way to plot neighborhood stabilization?
Notes from the Underground
Minneapolis is, by many accounts, home to a thriving economy. Why then, are there so many vacant properties in the city?
Star Tribune
All that empty acreage means that these big, rapidly developing cities don’t really have to sprawl.
CommercialCafe
A new report uses terms like epidemic and hyper-vacancy to drive home the point about the effects of vacancies on communities like Cleveland, Gary, Toledo, and Detroit.
Curbed
An innovative project in St. Louis' will revitalize the underinvested Gravois Park neighborhood while delivering housing options to creative types.
nextSTL
Chicago continues to lose population from parts of the city, so vacant properties are multiplying. The city's "Large Lots" program aims to return vacant properties back to control by residents of the neighborhoods.
Chicago Tribune
A community land trust is making moves in the Fruit Belt neighborhood of Buffalo, New York.
WIVB
Legal and community groups in St. Louis align to curb ill-effects of the city's many vacant properties.
KWMU
Highland Park, Michigan, a former hub of the auto industry, is looking for a massive redevelopment plan to revitalize the city.
The Detroit Free Press
There's a surprising amount of vacancies and blight in the nation's capital, and District officials aren't doing everything in their power to address the challenge.
The Washington Post
The state of Ohio is expanding a practice used by the Fannie Mae to counter the negative effects of vacancies and blight.
Associated Press via Cincinnati.com
Not only are suburbs growing, many of the larger, older cities that had reversed decades of population decline, are now losing population, again. The biggest losers: counties with the greatest population densities.
Governing
The vacant lot program at the Cook County Land Bank Authority recently kicked into high gear—offering a huge number of vacant lots for sale, located around 27 neighborhoods and suburbs in the Chicago region.
Crain's Chicago Business
It might seem obvious that vacant homes attract crime and other noxious elements to surrounding properties, but researchers are still working to quantify those external costs.
Next City
The Renewal Project examines the work of the House Life Project in Indianapolis.
The Renewal Project
