The Land Bank is intended to address the vacancy problem by consolidating ownership of city-owned properties, acquiring privately owned tax-delinquent properties, clearing tax liens and tangled titles, and selling or otherwise transferring properties in its inventory for development or other community uses. According to the plan, it will seek to promote new affordable and market-rate housing development, the creation of new businesses and the expansion of existing ones, the vitality of urban agriculture, and the availability of open space and green infrastructure.

As part of the strategic planning process, Interface Studio—along with partners Real Estate Strategies, Inc. and Lamar Wilson Associates—provided an updated inventory of vacant and tax-delinquent parcels in Philadelphia.

Roughly 8,000 vacant parcels are currently under some form of public ownership in Philadelphia and not committed to a specific project.

Another 24,000 properties are vacant and tax-delinquent but privately owned, according to the plan.

Of those 32,000 potential Land Bank properties, around 9,000 are vacant buildings.

The team identified more than 100 “assemblage opportunities,” each involving more than 10 vacant properties.

2,100 vacant lots sit next to homes whose owners are up-to-date on their taxes.

The data used to populate the report came from the city’s own public inventory of vacant land, property surveys conducted by the City Planning Commission and by Interface Studio, the Water Department and the Office of Innovation and Technology and—in the case of privately owned, tax-delinquent and vacant properties—the Revenue Department.

In an interview with PlanPhilly on Monday, John Carpenter, a deputy director for the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority, said that the various city agencies that hold property were helpful and forthcoming with the information. But Scott Page, the founder and principal of Interface Studio, acknowledged that the data still isn’t complete.

“We say in the report a number of times that the data is imperfect, and everyone is aware that that data is imperfect,” said Page. “One thing we learned in the process is that regardless of what dataset we looked at—whether it was Water Department or L&I or a combination of both or even the Planning Commission district data—it didn’t change the geography of where there’s a concentration of vacancy, it just changed the intensity … In terms of where there are real opportunities for the Land Bank to play a role, the geographies aren’t really changing.”

The plan outlines seven goals for the Land Bank. The first, a citywide goal, is to return individual vacant properties to productive use by identifying and marketing individual development opportunities (IDOs), transferring one-off vacant properties to adjacent owners as side yards, and preserving existing community gardens.

The next set of goals are focused on specific areas with high levels of vacant properties where the Land Bank will “proactively acquire, assemble, and dispose of property for specific purposes based on determined need and opportunity.” The goals are:

Promoting equitable development by supporting existing initiatives, such as Council President Darrell Clarke’s plan to build 1,500 new affordable housing units, and working to preserve affordability in neighborhoods undergoing gentrification. The plan recommends targeting new affordable housing in areas with good access to food and transit, and with a high concentration of “cost-burdened renters.”

Fostering private development by offering land for market-rate projects that include affordable housing components.

Supporting economic development by acquiring and repurposing properties on neighborhood commercial corridors and adjacent to existing businesses.

Protecting and increasing open space in areas that lack it.

The following images show the focus zones where those goals will be pursued.