Land Bank Strategies for Renewing Urban Land

Major urban areas are often hampered in their ability to deal with vacant, abandoned, and tax-delinquent properties. They encounter obstacles with inefficient tax foreclosure procedures and ineffective nuisance abatement codes. They face reluctance to add to public inventories the title to deteriorated properties and face restrictions upon the manner in which such properties can be transferred to private third parties.Land banks have emerged as effective tools for the renewal of urban land. With a perspective that vacant, abandoned, and tax-delinquent properties can become assets instead of liabilities, land banks serve to break the barriers to renewal of inner-city properties. Five land banks -- beginning in St. Louis and then emerging in Cleveland, Louisville, Atlanta, and Flint -- demonstrate how a land bank can operate as a local government authority to transcend the legal and structural impediments to conversion of these liabilities into assets