What To Do With Abandoned Buildings?

The Dec. 1999 Worcester fire started in a vacant structure, the Cold Storage Warehouse. But how many such potential fire hazards are waiting to happen?

According to Michael Pagano, a political science professor at the University of Miami in Ohio, there is no national census of abandoned structures, demolished buildings or of vacant land.

So that's what he and professor Ann Bowman of the University of South Carolina attempted to do in contacting 99 cities with populations over 100,000. Only 57 responded.

Pagano notes that the status of a structure can change frequently. It might be abandoned for three or four months while an owner negotiates with a new tenant.

Their findings are shown in the chart below.

Pagano's reservations: The abandoned structure number is just a gross estimate and it doesn't categorize stuctures by use. (Philadelphia's count, however, is mostly of residential structures, he said.) He insisted the figures are valuable, though. "It gives the broad idea but it doesn't give the specific count of the magnitude of the problem."