Efficient Land Use: What are we doing Wrong?
by Dana Carris
Consider a time when you dove through a city that you had never been in before. You are driving by and you notice the parks, the tall buildings, the library, and the town hall, but you also notice the condemned buildings, abandoned houses, the vacant lots, and the state of disrepair that all of these are in. Properties such as these litter cities all over the United States and serve no purpose to the city or the citizens, yet very little is done to renovate or revitalize them. The land is simply abandoned and left to sit as an eyesore for those who live and work in the city to pass by each day.
Based on a 2001 survey, which examined the quantity of vacant and abandoned land in 70 cities across the United States, 15% of a city's land, on average, is considered vacant. This vacant land includes abandoned buildings, unused land, and contaminated land. The average percent of land in each city that is considered vacant varies in different regions across the United States. To put this into perspective, the average amount of vacant land in a city in the Northeastern is 9.6%, while the average in a city in the South is 19.3%. If the data is viewed in a different way, it can be seen that a city with 15% of its land vacant is using 85%, at max, of its land for the benefit of the people and the function of the city. These statistics culminate to support two overarching facts; the majority of cities in the United States are inefficient in land use, and some of the inefficient land uses prove to be detrimental to the society and environment.
The cities in the United States that are inefficient in the use of their land are also being inefficient with their resources. Since land is a valuable resource to a city, cities that are not taking full advantage of it are wasting the resource, and will need to expand outward when they run out of land that they deem ‘useable’. When cities begin to expand outward without using the vacant land within, they are using even more resources to develop and purchase new land when they could just repair and reuse land that is already developed. In this case the vacant land that is occupying useable real estate continues to serve no purpose, yet it is still costing the city and taxpayers money to manage it.
Since vacant land makes up a sizeable portion of the average city, and there is no economic or social value to it, there are some cities and community organizations that are attempting to give it a purpose. One example of an organization converting vacant land to a practical use involves the Massachusetts Avenue Project. This project is based on Massachusetts Avenue in Buffalo New York where the organization has created an urban garden out of 13 previously vacant plots of land.. This garden grows a wide variety of vegetables and fruits, as well as chickens and fish to use for meat and eggs. The majority of the work done in the garden is by local volunteer high school students who gain the opportunity to learn practical skills in gardening outside of the classroom.
Current examples of individual communities using vacant land show that it wouldn't take too much effort for a city to come up with a useful purpose to its vacant land. Giving purpose to the land would make the citizens happier and the city more efficient by means of resource management. The city could even gather some practical economic or social value out of the use of the land. With there being so much benefit to the use of vacant land, all cities should take advantage of it rather than leaving it sit and waste while new land is being developed elsewhere.
[Photo, Abandoned, by Agustin Rafael Reyes licensed by CC BY-NC-SA 2.0]
by Dana Carris
Consider a time when you dove through a city that you had never been in before. You are driving by and you notice the parks, the tall buildings, the library, and the town hall, but you also notice the condemned buildings, abandoned houses, the vacant lots, and the state of disrepair that all of these are in. Properties such as these litter cities all over the United States and serve no purpose to the city or the citizens, yet very little is done to renovate or revitalize them. The land is simply abandoned and left to sit as an eyesore for those who live and work in the city to pass by each day.
Based on a 2001 survey, which examined the quantity of vacant and abandoned land in 70 cities across the United States, 15% of a city's land, on average, is considered vacant. This vacant land includes abandoned buildings, unused land, and contaminated land. The average percent of land in each city that is considered vacant varies in different regions across the United States. To put this into perspective, the average amount of vacant land in a city in the Northeastern is 9.6%, while the average in a city in the South is 19.3%. If the data is viewed in a different way, it can be seen that a city with 15% of its land vacant is using 85%, at max, of its land for the benefit of the people and the function of the city. These statistics culminate to support two overarching facts; the majority of cities in the United States are inefficient in land use, and some of the inefficient land uses prove to be detrimental to the society and environment.
The cities in the United States that are inefficient in the use of their land are also being inefficient with their resources. Since land is a valuable resource to a city, cities that are not taking full advantage of it are wasting the resource, and will need to expand outward when they run out of land that they deem ‘useable’. When cities begin to expand outward without using the vacant land within, they are using even more resources to develop and purchase new land when they could just repair and reuse land that is already developed. In this case the vacant land that is occupying useable real estate continues to serve no purpose, yet it is still costing the city and taxpayers money to manage it.
Since vacant land makes up a sizeable portion of the average city, and there is no economic or social value to it, there are some cities and community organizations that are attempting to give it a purpose. One example of an organization converting vacant land to a practical use involves the Massachusetts Avenue Project. This project is based on Massachusetts Avenue in Buffalo New York where the organization has created an urban garden out of 13 previously vacant plots of land.. This garden grows a wide variety of vegetables and fruits, as well as chickens and fish to use for meat and eggs. The majority of the work done in the garden is by local volunteer high school students who gain the opportunity to learn practical skills in gardening outside of the classroom.
Current examples of individual communities using vacant land show that it wouldn't take too much effort for a city to come up with a useful purpose to its vacant land. Giving purpose to the land would make the citizens happier and the city more efficient by means of resource management. The city could even gather some practical economic or social value out of the use of the land. With there being so much benefit to the use of vacant land, all cities should take advantage of it rather than leaving it sit and waste while new land is being developed elsewhere.
[Photo, Abandoned, by Agustin Rafael Reyes licensed by CC BY-NC-SA 2.0]