The Providence Urban Land Reform Initiative is a joint project of The Providence Plan and the Providence Department of Planning and Development. This initiative has set out to to build an urban land information system and to create a set of urban land reform strategies for the City of Providence and community partners in order to help policymakers, planners and developers make more informed decisions about how to transform vacant and abandoned properties into revenue-generating assets.

A major goal of the project is the development of a Neighborhood Early Warning System in order to identify housing distress within Providence neighborhoods.  Neighborhood Early Warning Systems (NEWS) incorporate a number of indicators, derived from government property data, that determine instances of tax delinquency, code violations, etc. at the parcel level.  The Providence project combines these indicators with information collected from a citywide property survey to determine early warning signs that a property may face increasing problems such as mortgage foreclosure or vacancy. The second major goal of the project is to inform policy through data analysis, research, and policy recommendations.

The system also serves as a tool for citizens and community groups to follow trends in their neighborhoods, and provides an opportunity for user input as a way to tap local insight to inform and expand the City’s knowledge base. The Urban Land Reform Initiative believes the combination of an engaged public, a reliable information stream, and a concise set of action steps will provide for an early-response environment and a playing field where housing and economic opportunities are readily identifiable at the property-level.

As designers of the information system, ProvPlan staff are taking the lead in maintaining and enhancing the system, through ongoing guidance of municipal and non-profit partners. Responsibilities include preparation of city and proprietary datasets, posting utilization/abandonment input from community partners, providing trainings and responding to user suggestions, as well as filtering property comments when necessary. With appropriate contributions from its partners, The Providence Plan embraces this opportunity to house and maintain the Urban Land Information System and envisions several future enhancements to benefit public policy objectives.

Funding for the project has been provided by The Rhode Island Foundation, The Brookings Institution, RI Department of Health, and the Fannie Mae Rhode Island Partnership Office.