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Been , Vicki and Voicu, Ioan, "The Effect of Community Gardens on Neighboring Property Values" (2006). New York University Law and Economics Working Papers. Paper 46. http://lsr.nellco.org/nyu_lewp/46 DRAFT PAPER - PLEASE DO NOT CITE WITHOUT PERMISSION Abstract: "Cities across the United States increasingly are debating the best way to use vacant "infill" lots. The community garden movement is one of the major contenders for the space, as are advocates for small public "pocket" parks and other green spaces. To allocate the land most efficiently and fairly, local governments need sound research about the value of such gardens and parks to their host communities. At the same time, cities are looking for new ways of financing the development and maintenance of public garden and park space. Some have turned to tax increment financing to generate resources, other are introducing impact fees or special assessments to cover the costs of urban parks. In order to employ such financing mechanisms, both policy concerns and legal constraints require local governments to base their charges on sound data about the impacts green spaces have on the value of the neighboring properties that would be forced to bear the incidence of the tax or fee. Despite the clear public policy need for such data, our knowledge about the impacts community gardens and other such spaces have on surrounding neighborhoods is quite limited. No studies have focused specifically on community gardens, and those that have examined the property value impacts of parks and other open space are cross-sectional studies inattentive to when the park opened, so that it is impossible to determine the direction of the causality of any property value differences found. The existing literature also has paid insufficient attention to qualitative differences among the parks studied and to differences in characteristics of the surrounding neighborhoods that might affect the parks' impacts

Kromer, John and Christopher Kingsley. "Vacant Property Reclamation through Strategic Investment." Philadelphia: Penn Fels Institute of Government, 2010. "Neighborhood Stabilization and Safety in East North Philadelphia, 1998-2010 provides evidence of improving social outcomes for a section of North Philadelphia that lies east of the Temple University main campus. During the past decade, one of Philadelphia's leading community development corporations, Asociación Puertorriqueños en Marcha, the Association of Puerto Ricans on the March, or APM, has developed hundreds of well-designed sales and rental housing units and a new supermarket on formerly vacant parcels within the area. A greening program undertaken in coordination with the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, PHS, has also brought well-tended grass and trees to once-neglected lots."

Leigh, Nancey Greene, 2003. "The State Role In Urban Land Redevelopment," The Brookings Institution, April 2003. http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/reports/2003/04metropolitanpolicy_leigh/leighvacant.pdf

Leigh, Nancey Green, and Sarah L. Coffin (2005). "Modeling the Relationship among Brownfields, Property Values, and community Revitalization. Housing Policy Debate." 16(2), 257-280. Abstract: "The main focus in redeveloping brownfields is on the most marketable properties, typically found in the healthiest urban neighborhoods. As evidenced by the rapid redevelopment that many communities are experiencing, this approach is helping to return brownfields to productive use. Yet not all brownfields are being cleaned up, nor are there enough resources to do so soon. Thus, from the perspective of community revitalization and of economic justice, we need to ask whether it matters which properties in which neighborhoods are receiving these scarce funds. That is, does the existence of brownfields in a neighborhood affect residential property values and capacity for revitalization? To answer these questions, we use hedonic modeling to determine the impact of brownfields on property values in Atlanta and Cleveland. Our results suggest that short‐term economic efficiency is neither the most appropriate nor the only criterion on which to base public investment decisions for remediation."

Nassauer, Joan Iverson and Rebekah VanWieren. 2008. "Vacant Property Now & Tomorrow: Building Enduring Values with Natural Assets." Genesee Institute, Flint MI. This is a special report for Genessee County Land Bank on how to strategically green vacant properties. It provides a strategic framework for short-, medium-, and long-term use following principles of ecological land use design. The report also provides seven reuse typologies spanning open space and habitat to urban parks and neighborhood gateways.

Hasse, Dagmar (2008). Urban Ecology of Shrinking Cities: An Unrecognized Opportunity? Nature and Culture, 3(1), 1-8. Abstract: "Whereas environmental and social impacts of urban sprawl are widely discussed among scholars from both the natural and social sciences, the spatial consequences of urban decline are nearly neglected when discussing the impacts of land transition. Within the last decade, "shrinkage" and "perforation" have arisen as new terms to explain the land use development of urban regions faced with demographic change, particularly decreasing fertility, aging, and out-migration. Although shrinkage is far from being a "desired" scenario for urban policy makers, this paper argues that a perforation of the built-up structure in dense cities might bring up many positive implications."

Mallach, Alan and Lavea Brachman. "Ohio's Cities At a Turning Point: Finding the Way Forward." Metropolitan Policy Program, Brookings Institution, 2010.