Aug. 4, 2011

In the (Aug. 4)  edition of The New York Times, Landscape Architecture Professor Joan Nassauer discusses land-use strategies for urban areas dealing with too many vacant lots. The article, titled í¢â‚¬Å“Finding the Potential in Vacant Lots,í¢â‚¬  examines how American cities are rethinking the value of the thousands of vacant lots now reshaping their landscapes.

Local governments have been "left holding many, many, many properties that they would rather not own," Professor Nassauer says in the article by Michael Tortorello. "But now they own them, and they've got to manage them."

In discussing her work with the Genesee (Michigan) Land Bank, Professor Nassauer says that vacant lots could be the parkland and home sites of tomorrow, if managed smartly. In Genesee County, she developed a list of nine lot treatments to suit different land priorities, like watershed protection and neighborhood resettlement, according to the NYT article.

She is further exploring these issues as part of a Graham Environmental Sustainability Institute-funded research projected titled "Documenting & Demonstrating Neighborhood Care Dynamics in CDAD's Urban Homesteads and Naturescapes." The research is being funded by Graham as part of a partnership with Data Driven Detroit under the Detroit Sustainability Indicators Project.

View the NYT article: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/04/garden/finding-the-potential-in-vacant... left behind&st=cse&scp=1&pagewanted=all

News release about Genesee Land Bank: http://snre.umich.edu/node/7123

More on the Data Driven Detroit project: http://www.graham.umich.edu/ia/detroit.php