Recognizing the connections between litter and blight, Keep America Beautiful, working with its State Leaders Council and leaders from affiliates in major metropolitan areas, selected Econsult Solutions to explore the gaps in the national conversation about blight—from how it’s defined to the type of research conducted surrounding the issue. Most research on blight tends to focus on the urban context of blight and does not compare its impacts across all community levels (urban, suburban and rural). Moreover, the research about cost factors associated with blight is diffuse and hasn’t been compiled in one place.
Research identified in the Keep America Beautiful report documents the community impacts that blighted properties generate, particularly on the value of adjacent properties:
- Vacant properties cost city governments from $5,000 to $35,000 per property.
- Foreclosed homes can lead to an average increase of 1 percent in neighborhood crime.
- Vacant dwellings have higher risks of fires in urban areas.
- Residents in blighted neighborhoods have greater exposure to public health and environmental risks.
- Low-income neighborhoods are more vulnerable to increases in property abandonment.
What Can Be Done?
The report concludes with a series of recommendations for Keep America Beautiful and its community-based affiliates, as well as practical actions local governments and community leaders can take to combat blight.
A first step is to identify the types and map the locations of blighted properties. Many cities are now engaging community members in walking the streets with smartphones and tablets to tally and classify vacant properties; Detroit’s Motor City Mapping Project is one such initiative.
Another preliminary step is educating policymakers and citizens about the impacts of the problem by demonstrating the costs of inaction. Documenting how blighted properties drain local and county budgets, as well as the social and economic costs on neighborhoods, can build community and political momentum.
Another emerging strategy is adopting specialized blight plans to sustain a community’s long-term commitment to address blight. For example, as part of its 2014 comprehensive plan update, the city of Flint’s Blight Elimination Framework estimated the total costs ($100 million) to remove and reclaim nearly 20,000 derelict properties, but also set a series of five-year benchmarks.
A startling fact is that by far the large majority of these blighted properties are in the hands of private owners. Thus, local governments have to adopt programs and policies that allow these governments to abate the nuisance private properties, recover costs, and, in some cases, acquire the property itself. Dozens of communities throughout the country are chartering land-bank authorities or adopting land-banking statutes and ordinances to help manage and in some instances recover blighted properties. Communities can publish a problem properties toolkit, which explains how communities can take action to address vacant and blighted properties; expand the use of targeted code enforcement; or utilize low-cost, high-tech tools, such as apps, to inventory blighted properties.
Beyond documenting the problem, communities must also develop strategies for reusing and reclaiming blighted properties. In declining industrial cities that have substantially lost population, urban greening strategies have emerged as a more sensible way to stabilize urban decline. Initiatives, such as Reimagining a More Sustainable Cleveland, provide blueprints and urban-design strategies for community gardens, green infrastructure and pocket parks. Many of these urban greening efforts are led by community-based organizations or national networks, such as Groundwork USA, which operates in more than 20 cities.
A Long-term Initiative
While considerable research has examined the history of blight in the U.S., its role in national policy and the experience of communities living in blighted neighborhoods, little research has systematically examined the multiple meanings of blight across contexts.
This project reviews and synthesizes knowledge about blight, broadly conceived, and draws together academic literature and practitioner reports to systematically assess:
- 1. The nature of blight.
- 2. The effects of blight.
- 3. The factors that have shaped its development.
- 4. How understandings of blight have changed over time.
PHOTOS: Keep Cincinnati Beautiful