WHY IT MATTERS
The City of Chicago (COC) owns over 10,000 vacant properties, which serve as a visual indication of disinvestment and economic decline. Evidence demonstrates that abandoned land depresses property values, increases crime, and correlates with worse public health outcomes. Similarly, increasing availability and proximity to green space results in various health and environmental benefits including stress reduction, social cohesion, and air pollutant reduction. The plethora of vacant lots and an incomplete database have slowed development and reconstruction, while impacted communities clamor for an opportunity to put vacant land to productive use. Moreover, it is unclear which City-owned land is available, what the cost is, and which program(s) it qualifies for. Thus, the City should improve upon the current infrastructure in this space to promote proactive lot activation and disposition.
HOW IT WORKS
The City should actively maintain a vacant lot portal that will serve as a free, online resource for homebuyers, residential developers, and prospective business owners to search and view City-owned vacant land. The portal should improve upon the COLS database and the Large Lots program’s interactive map to include the basic features of an online real estate marketplace. This includes filtering functions, featured properties, and recent pictures. From there, the following key components are essential to maintaining an online, vacant lot portal:
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Construct Steering Committee: Aside from City-owned vacant lots, more than 20,000 are managed by municipal agencies or private companies where different stakeholders own different data components. Even so, efforts to address land vacancy, rehabilitation, and reinvestment is also dispersed among the Cook County Land Bank, Emerald South Economic Development Collaborative, GreenCorps, and many others. Organizational leadership and departmental ownership is essential to the effectiveness of this initiative.
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Lead through Community Engagement. Chicagoland residents, and specifically Black and Brown communities, are disproportionately overburdened by policies and practices crafted by the City. The City must acknowledge contributions of harm, holistically assess the state of neighborhoods, and ensure strategies and solutions are rooted in community input.
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Establish Processes for Database Management: It is essential to determine who will actively and consistently manage the vacant lot data. This should include change management workflows to address how data will be kept up-to-date.
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Lots By Program and/or Use Type: Since there are a number of programs and initiatives in this space, be prescriptive with which lots qualify for which program (e.g. Large Lots, ANLAP, Clean and Green) or use type (e.g. housing, urban agriculture, community garden)
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Publish Detailed Process Maps Per Program: It is difficult to wade through the various programs/initiatives and to understand all the steps that go into each one. Promote clarity by aggregating and publishing all the steps associated with each program.
