January 26, 2018
Blighted and vacant urban land is a widespread environmental condition encountered by millions of people each day. About 15% of the land in US cities is deemed vacant or abandoned, translating into an area roughly the size of Switzerland: over 3 million hectares of otherwise beneficial spaces remain neglected. Urban residents, especially in low-income neighborhoods, point to these spaces as primary threats to their health and safety. Many cities have focused on complicated and expensive responses to their vacant land problem as part of large urban transformation initiatives. These responses have typically been intended to drive economic development and have often resulted in the relocation of residents, or the transformation of vacant spaces into luxury amenities or housing intended to economically buoy depopulating neighborhoods. While these strategies can
change local economic conditions, they also can have the unintended consequence of displacing people who do not wish to move, create further entrenched neighborhood segregation, and may not adequately address the widespread problem of vacant land that chiefly affects low-resource neighborhoods.
The widespread vacant land problem in US cities calls for more than economic development or relocation programs. These solutions can be expensive, may benefit select groups of residents,
and may not reflect residents’ needs and preferences. A recent, landmark randomized controlled trial demonstrated that individuals who relocated out of low-income urban residences via
a voucher system had significant health and safety benefits. However, subsets of these individuals, such as adolescent boys, were also found to have been negatively affected by relocation and
over half of the study’s participants who were given relocation vouchers opted not to use them. This landmark study clearly indicates the importance of neighborhood context, although the
high costs of relocation and the demonstrated preferences against moving suggest that perhaps less expensive, “in situ” approaches that can be applied to entire cities and allow residents to remain in their existing homes deserve consideration.
