The "V" Factor:
Using Vacant Commercial and Industrial Buildings
as Indicators in the Urban Environment

Lindsay Haddix
Bachelor's of Arts in Environmental Studies
May 2002

The purpose of my thesis is to determine whether or not the presence of vacant commercial, industrial, and combination use buildings is correlated with negative externalities on neighboring properties. The Providence, Rhode Island data I used for my study were: environmental violations, housing code violations, reported crimes, and change in parcel value. I chose eight case study buildings from a list of vacant buildings compiled by the Department of Inspection and Standards. This list includes vacant buildings in Providence that have been reported vacant to the Department by concerned citizens or added to the list by inspectors who notice them when out in the field. This list by no means includes all of the vacant buildings in Providence.

I mapped the case study buildings using GIS and then overlaid my variables to see if code or environmental violations, reported crime, or decreases in the assessed values of parcels were more likely to occur near my case study buildings than to occur throughout a larger neighborhood area. After completing my mapping, I looked up the prior uses of my buildings in the City Archives. Unfortunately, I discovered that many of my case study buildings became vacant several years before being placed on the Department of Inspection and Standards vacant buildings list, and the date I had been using to approximate time of vacancy was grossly inaccurate, voiding my "before and after" reported crime analysis.

I found a relationship with only one of the variables - land value change. In seven of the eight case studies, the parcels within a 250 ft buffer around the vacant building increased less or decreased more in value on average relative to the average land value changes of a larger neighborhood area. Using the equation (current value-prior value)/current value, the difference between the means of the smaller buffer area and the larger neighborhood area in those seven case studies ranged from -0.10 - -0.39. In four out of those seven cases, the p value was < 0.05, or statistically significant. Therefore, vacant commercial, industrial, and combination use buildings can be used as indicators of economic decline in revitalization efforts and could assist organizations, including the City of Providence, in targeting areas in need of assistance. I was not able to determine a relation between vacant commercial and industrial buildings and the other three variables I examined. This indicates that vacant commercial and industrial buildings do not have a relationship with those negative externalities occurring on neighboring properties.