"The City of Philadelphia is on the verge of producing a strategy for coping with one of its most-abundant and most troubling resources: abandoned property and vacant land.

The challenge is staggering. Karen Black, a policy analyst with long experience in Philadelphia real estate, says, “We think we’re number two behind Detroit.” Roughly 10% of the city’s half-million parcels of land are unoccupied. All this land was productive once; now, though, notes economist Kevin Gillen, “It has negative value.” A report by his firm, Econsult, released Nov. 11, 2010, estimated blighted properties cost Philadelphians collectively $3.6 billion in lost household wealth – an average of $8,000 per household – by depressing the values of neighboring properties."  For the complete article, please click here.