SECTION THREE

Develop a Regional Property Information System and

Network of Neighborhood Revitalization Plans
Reinvestment and revitalization of vacant properties starts with two interrelated and
fundamental steps: a real property information system and a collaborative neighborhood
strategic planning process. Effective vacant-property initiatives are always supported by
citywide or countywide real property information systems that can provide policy makers and the
community with easy access to critical data (e.g., inventory of vacant properties, tax
delinquencies, foreclosures, and ownership information) and a network of neighborhood
revitalization plans based on a market-driven, neighborhood typology. A Web-based, GIS-driven
data system can easily facilitate the design and implementation of these strategic neighborhood
plans to ensure the right resources to the right places.

A Countywide Neighborhood Information System (NIS)

All prospective developers initially ask the same questions about vacant properties in a particular
city: What are the addresses of vacant properties in the city? What are the dimensions and other
physical characteristics of those properties? Who owns them? Which ones are tax delinquent?
Public agency staff who manage public services such as code enforcement need to obtain some
of this information as well. Neighborhood-based and nonprofit organizations that are engaged in
planning and development activities also benefit from ready access to this information.

A neighborhood information system (NIS) is a resource for providing this information online.
Using the NIS, a person who is interested in considering opportunities to develop vacant
property on a specific block, or in a particular neighborhood, would be able to review public
records associated with any property in that location. In neighborhoods where vacancy surveys
have been completed, survey information can be integrated into the NIS so that users can be
informed about the addresses of properties identified through the survey process as vacant.

Neighborhood information systems are being operated or developed in many locations across the
country, and the time and cost associated with NIS development can vary widely. The NIS
system that was developed for Philadelphia, through a partnership between the city and the
University of Pennsylvania, draws on the academic institution’s value as a center of knowledge
and learning, with the capacity to train new system users and to support related research projects.

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The university manages this consolidated database of real estate records, which municipal
agencies periodically download.

Essential Information Systems Components

Two primary elements of the University of Pennsylvania’s Cartographic Modeling Laboratory

(CML) system are particularly relevant to the Miami Valley: parcelBase and
neighborhoodBase:
• ParcelBase is a “data warehouse” of address-specific housing and real estate data covering
more than 500,000 properties in Philadelphia. These data are made available through an
agreement between the university and the city of Philadelphia, in which city agencies with
real estate record maintenance responsibilities download address-specific data into the
system at least quarterly. Information that is accessible through parcelBase includes the
size of property, owner’s name, date of purchase, purchase price, tax-delinquency status,
gas and water accounts’ status, and city code violations (if any). In order to gain access to
this information, an authorized user types in a specific address or selects a property by
“pointing and clicking” the property location as displayed on a GIS property-boundary
map. Authorized users include public agency staff and representatives of local nonprofit
organizations and institutions.
• NeighborhoodBase contains data about housing and neighborhood conditions aggregated
by census tract, ZIP code, legislative boundaries, and other geographies.

These two NIS components facilitate planning for revitalization and investment by providing
quick access to detailed information about individual properties as well as aggregated data
about neighborhood characteristics.

Miami Valley local governments should pursue a collaborative approach with the county to
create an NIS for the Miami Valley region. The core of a Miami Valley NIS should be a database
of address-specific municipal and county real estate records, linked to a property-line GIS
application. Such a system would enable a user who types in a specific address to view a
property-line map display of the property in the context of its immediate surroundings (i.e.,
boundaries of adjacent and nearby properties, streets, and intersections) as well as information
extracted from public records. This information would include property dimensions, zoning,
owner name and address, last sale date and sale amount, assessed value and annual real estate
taxes, tax delinquency (if any), and code-violation history (if any).

Montgomery County agencies have already begun to collaborate successfully in sharing and
facilitating access to real estate records. The most important of these records are managed by the
office of the recorder (deed and mortgage information), the offices of the auditor and treasurer
(appraisal and tax information), the probate court, and the clerk of court (information on liens

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and judgments).1 At present, county employees can obtain access to these records through the
county government’s intranet system. Citizens may obtain information over the Internet by
entering the Web sites of the above agencies and searching for data relating to a specific property
address.2

The auditor’s office recently acquired a software program that links data records with a GIS
mapping application and allows for a “layering” of data from multiple sources. During the
summer of 2005, the office expects that county agencies will decide how to use this program and
other available technology to integrate and consolidate their records. Because significant agency-
control issues related to data ownership and access have been overcome in recent years, the
prospects for successfully advancing these activities appear to be very favorable.

Although NIS development involves commitments of time and funding, the creation, refinement,
and improvement of such a system can be completed incrementally over a period of a few years
at a reasonable cost. In Philadelphia and other cities, charitable foundations have provided major
funding to support NIS design and installation. Once a system is developed, some cities have
found it cost-effective to have a local academic institution manage it. Miami Valley
constituencies can design their own NIS models to provide the information that is most relevant
to investment and development in Dayton and its surrounding core communities.

POLICY RECOMMENDATION: Design and develop a neighborhood information system

for Dayton and the county’s core communities; this preliminary effort could serve as a pilot
project for a subsequent regional real property information system.

• ACTION ITEM: Convene a working group from the county and cities within the region
to define the scope of the collaborative effort and develop data-sharing standards.
• ACTION ITEM: Designate an entity or data intermediary to manage and maintain the
real property information system network.
• ACTION ITEM: Coordinate with the upcoming MVRPC GIS enhancement project.
• ACTION ITEM: Host a special NIS workshop with national experts from the University
of Pennsylvania.

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 A Network of Neighborhood Revitalization Plans
Real property information systems build the foundations for action. Meaningful neighborhood
planning that uses these systems serves as the basis for a network of community revitalization
plans that guide citywide (and perhaps even regional) reinvestment and economic development
strategies. Effective community-driven neighborhood planning generally involves several
important interrelated elements:
• Neighborhood indicators obtained through census information, municipal records, real
estate market data, and other information that is necessary to evaluate development
potential and to identify, implement, and monitor strategies designed to take advantage of
available opportunities
• A classification or typology of neighborhoods based on a market or cluster analysis of
regional and local housing markets so that revitalization plans are drawn up in
accordance with opportunities and constraints associated with neighborhood, local, and
regional real estate markets
• Collaborative involvement techniques that engage government, business, institutional,
resident, and community leaders in the planning process
• Transparent selection of strategic neighborhoods and subsequent targeting of resources.

Neighborhood Typology and Market Cluster Analysis

A classification of neighborhood types relies on market cluster analysis—involving census data,
data about real estate transactions, and data from municipal records—and then extracts,
aggregates, evaluates, and maps the information in order to characterize and rank neighborhood
real estate markets in terms of their existing development potential. Information used for this
purpose may include address-specific data and census-tract or census-block data on variables
such as property values, foreclosures, aging of the population, number of rental housing units,
number of vacant houses, and median sale prices. The resulting neighborhood typology shows

• Strong neighborhood markets (i.e., those areas that might be considered by buyers and
investors with sufficient financial resources to consider any location in the region)
• Weak neighborhood markets (where demolition and land assembly are key activities
because the current real estate market is so weak)

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 • Stable or transitional neighborhood markets in which a combination of prevention,
preservation, and development strategies is recommended.

One major strength of market cluster analysis is the broad but detailed frame of reference that it
produces on the basis of data that are generally believed to be relevant to decision making in the
real estate marketplace. GIS mapping of these aggregated data provides a view of citywide and
regional patterns as well as insight into the defining characteristics of individual neighborhoods.3
A significant number of the urban neighborhoods that experienced dramatic turnarounds during
the past decade had been among the weakest neighborhood real estate markets in the cities where
they are located. Other factors, including proximity to assets or investment, unique features of
the built environment, or availability of developable property, outweighed existing conditions as
factors influencing investment and development in these turnaround neighborhoods.

Philadelphia’s Neighborhood Transformation Initiative

In Philadelphia, a citywide market cluster analysis completed by The Reinvestment Fund
(TRF—a Philadelphia-based nonprofit organization that has pioneered this approach) guided
important reinvestment strategies associated with Mayor John F. Street’s Neighborhood
Transformation Initiative (NTI—see www.phila.gov/nti). Based on TRF's analysis, NTI
investment decisions included demolition and site assemblage in “reclamation” markets
characterized by high vacancy and widespread blight, complemented by activities such as
targeted code enforcement, vacant-house rehabilitation, and home repair/improvement
financing in areas with greater market strength. TRF has completed similar analyses in
Camden, New Jersey (http://www.trfund.com/policy/policy.camden.htm.). Several municipal
governments (e.g., Baltimore and the District of Columbia) have also used this approach as a
starting point for neighborhood strategic planning.

Collaborative Neighborhood Engagement Processes

Visioning is an essential tool of any successful neighborhood strategic planning process. It is a
broad civic engagement process that involves community members in a dialogue about the future
identity and character of a neighborhood. In many instances, this collaborative process includes
an identification of community assets and community problems and an effort to achieve
consensus on community goals and priorities, along with related development and improvement
activities to be implemented over a period of years. For the city of Dayton, working with and
through its network of priority boards still appears to be an important and viable civic
engagement strategy.

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Civic engagement is particularly important in older urban areas, where a broad “rethinking” may
be needed in order to plan a postindustrial future through decision making about issues such as
blight removal, the preservation of valued existing assets, housing density, the location and scope
of retail development, and the prospects for mixed-income development.4 The results of a
neighborhood strategic-planning process can be documented in a comprehensive report, on a
Web site, in a summary publication containing equal parts narrative and graphic illustrations, or
on a map or poster.

Dayton’s neighborhoods have a long history of civic engagement with their priority boards. The
city of Dayton facilitated a collaborative visioning process to create its Dayton’s 2020 Plan. It
devised a set of principles and specific actions to guide the rejuvenation of the city for a twenty-
five-year period. Every few years the city manager reconvenes a group of policy makers and
business and civic leaders to review and revise different elements of the 2020 Plan.

Selecting Strategic Neighborhoods and Targeting Limited Resources

Because the cost of addressing vacant property reclamation substantially exceeds the level of
available community resources, communities are now forced to allocate resources and focus on
investment opportunities that build on existing neighborhood strengths, leverage other
commitments of support, and produce tangible benefits. One of the key challenges for policy
makers is how to identify and select these neighborhoods. Answers to the following questions
may provide the criteria to use in this process:
• What are the important characteristics that define this neighborhood?
• What should be the future identity of the neighborhood? What are the key characteristics
of this new identity?
• What will it take to advance the neighborhood from its current status to its desired future
status? What are the sequence and timing of related development and improvement
activities?
• How do these actions, as set forth in the neighborhood plan, relate to any comprehensive
land use plan or citywide revitalization plan?

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 • Understanding the availability of public and private resources for investment, what
realistically can be accomplished during the next twelve to eighteen months? Which
individuals and organizations will lead and manage which elements of these activities?
• How will resources be monitored and evaluated over the course of these programs and
initiatives?

Neighborhoods in Bloom

Richmond, Virginia, developed the Neighborhoods in Bloom (NiB) program to address

growing concerns about high crime and vacant, blighted properties. The city evaluated data to
classify its neighborhoods into four broad categories based on their poverty rates,
concentrations of abandoned buildings, levels of crime, and other factors. City officials
coordinated a consensus-based neighborhood planning effort with assistance from the LISC
regional office and Richmond’s Neighborhood Development Network. Using these strategic
plans, the mayor and the city council targeted the majority of Richmond’s HOME and CDBG
funds, along with other city programs and resources, to six neighborhoods where they would
have the greatest impact. These NiB neighborhoods have since seen significant reductions in
crime and increases in property values and reinvestment. In 2002, the mayor and city council
reauthorized the six original NiB neighborhoods and included one new neighborhood.
J.M. Schilling and Naomi Friedman, “Richmond Neighborhoods in Bloom Case Study,”
www.icma.org/vacantproperties

POLICY RECOMMENDATION: Create a classification of different neighborhood types

based on common characteristics, assets, and attributes.

• ACTION ITEM: Build on the preliminary neighborhood classification work of Dayton’s

Neighborhood Investment Framework (1996) and the Zoning Code Update (2004-2005).
• ACTION ITEM: Devise criteria for developing the neighborhood typologies.
• ACTION ITEM: Using GIS technology, apply the neighborhood typology to
neighborhoods, or collections of neighborhoods, so that local jurisdictions can more
strategically deploy resources and funds (e.g., CDBG).

POLICY RECOMMENDATION: Create a network of neighborhood revitalization plans

for Dayton and other core communities within the Miami Valley.

• ACTION ITEM: Base these plans on the vacant property information system and
neighborhood typology.
• ACTION ITEM: Design a collaborative process that accommodates the interests and
goals of the region’s elected leaders as well as the interests and support of community
groups, business leaders, CDCs, and civic and neighborhood leaders.
• ACTION ITEM: Consider hiring a professional facilitation team that is experienced with
community and neighborhood visioning to engage the community in the neighborhood
planning process.

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POLICY RECOMMENDATION: Target relevant community development programs and
resources based on these neighborhood plans.

• ACTION ITEM: Deploy limited public and non-profit resources according to these plans,
and set priorities for more effective revitalization programs.
• ACTION ITEM: Reallocate public and non-profit resources (starting July 1 of FY 2006)
to those priority neighborhoods identified in the reinvestment plans.

1
Based on John Kromer phone conversations with Charles Bowling, recorder’s office, and Elaine Johnson, auditor’s
office, on February 28, 2005.
2
The best way to obtain access to address-specific county records is by visiting a Web site created by the auditor’s
office in February 2005, www.mcrealestate.org. When additions and refinements are completed, this site will
provide property summaries, tax information, a GIS property “sketch,” an aerial photograph, and lot dimensions, as
well as links to other county agencies that keep real estate data records.
3
One weakness of market cluster analysis is that this view amounts to a “snapshot” of existing conditions, which
should not be used as the sole guide to investment and development strategy.
4
One potential pitfall of this process is that it can lead to the creation of unrealistic expectations; not every
community can have its own recreation center or supermarket. Although community buy-in is an essential part of
strategic planning, “visioning” activities must be guided by recognition of the realities of the real estate market and
the limited availability of public resources to support unique improvement projects.

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