Property Parcel Research Articles

Evaluation of zoned public real property parcels as small industrial site and model proposal: SISPE

Evaluation of zoned public real property parcels as small industrial site and model proposal: SISPE

This land is your land, this could be marsh land: Property parcel characteristics of marsh migration corridors in Rhode Island, USA

Salt marshes, critical habitats offering many ecosystem services, are threatened by development, accelerated sea level rise (SLR) and other anthropogenic stressors that are projected to worsen. As seas rise, some salt marshes can migrate inland if there is adjacent, permeable, undeveloped land available. Facilitating marsh migration is necessary for coastal resilience efforts, but extensive coastal development can make finding suitable migration corridors challenging. This work seeks to characterize changes in land use, ownership, and economic value at the property parcel level within current versus future marsh areas for the state of Rhode Island, USA. We find that most parcels currently containing salt marsh are publicly owned, whereas most adjacent parcels projected to contain new salt marsh in 2050 are privately owned. Additionally, parcels containing new marsh in 2050 have 47% higher per-hectare assessed values than parcels containing current marsh. We describe the locations and characteristics of parcels within migration corridors with the lowest per-hectare values that may be the most cost-effective for marsh conservation practitioners to protect. This study highlights the expanding land use types and landowner sets that will be involved in marsh conservation decisions, and the economic value of potential migration corridors where costly tradeoffs may be necessary to promote coastal resilience.

Horizontal Holdings: Untangling the Networks of Corporate Landlords

Since the capitalist and colonial enclosure of land-qua-property, the property parcel has served as the geographic foundation of land ownership. Bounded, self-contained, and mutually exclusive with all surrounding parcels, this geography is taken for granted in our contemporary understandings of property. As the ownership of land, property, and housing has become increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer hands in recent years, however, it perhaps makes more sense to think of property not as isolated and individual, but as fundamentally networked and relational. Properties that are quite distant from one another are often connected through tangled webs of corporate property ownership, which are meant to deliberately obscure the true ownership—and concentration—of such property from public view. This article demonstrates the importance of untangling these corporate networks, using a case study of three large corporate landlords operating in metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia: Invitation Homes, Pretium Partners, and Amherst Holdings. The article shows how the true extent of these corporate landlords’ holdings is hidden by these networks, and how researchers can untangle that to produce a more complete understanding of concentrated housing ownership. Through this method, we can uncover that these three firms control more than 19,000 single-family homes across the five core counties of Metro Atlanta, using an extensive network of more than 190 corporate aliases—registered to seventy-four different addresses across ten states and one territory—to hide their holdings behind a veil of secrecy and insulate themselves from liability.

Residential land owner type mediates the connections among vacancy, overgrown vegetation, and equity

Attributes of property parcel owners are hypothesized to impact land management outcomes, because different types of owners are likely to have different capacities and motivations for land stewardship. We used emerging data resources to examine how owner type relates to the prevalence of overgrown vegetation in Toledo, Ohio, and Trenton, New Jersey, USA. Overgrown vegetation was characterized at the property parcel scale using data from comprehensive parcel surveys in each city, and owner attributes were categorized using local property tax databases. We categorized owners into types (e.g., individuals, investors, nonprofits), classified owners as local or non-local, and determined whether or not parcels were owner-occupied. Then we tested for differences in rates of overgrown vegetation across owner types using inferential statistics including chi-squared tests and autologistic regression. Individual owners had lower rates of overgrown vegetation than other owner types. Neighborhood context was also important, as overgrown lawns were more prevalent in high-vacancy areas. Among parcels owned by individuals, overgrown vegetation was less prevalent when the owner resided locally, and when the property was owner-occupied. This study advances our understanding of social-ecological outcomes in US shrinking cities by exploring how land ownership is related to vegetation management in ways that can dictate whether vegetation is serving as an amenity to the community. These findings may help promote desirable social-ecological outcomes and lead to more equitable futures in high-vacancy neighborhoods. Specifically, our results point to more equitable vegetation outcomes when parcels are owned by individuals, and particularly owners who reside on-site or locally.

Say NOPE to social disorganization criminology: the importance of creators in neighborhood social control

Despite decades of research into social disorganization theory, criminologists have made little progress developing community programs that reduce crime. The lack of progress is due in part to faulty assumptions in the theory: that neighborhoods are important; that residents are the primary source of control; and that informal social controls are emergent. In this paper we propose an alternative: the neighborhoods out of places explanation (NOPE). NOPE starts with property parcels (i.e., proprietary places), rather than neighborhoods. It focuses on the power and legal authority of people and institutions that own property, rather than on residents. It posits that control is intentional and goal driven, rather than emergent. We refer to those who own and control as creators. This small group of elites shape city areas and residents must adapt to the environments that suppress or facilitate crime. We discuss how shifting our focus to creators provides important new implications for theory, research, and policy in criminology.

A Multi-Scale Suitability Analysis of Home-Improvement Retail-Store Site Selection for Ontario, Canada

A multi-scale suitability analysis using big data (4.7 million suitability scores) is presented across a large spatial extent (1.076 million km2) to identify potential locations for new home-improvement retail stores. Suitability scores were generated for individual property parcels using criteria weights derived from surveyed retail-industry experts. To increase capacity for site selection, distributions of suitability scores were generated at census dissemination areas (populations 500-700; n = 19,963) and census metropolitan and agglomeration areas (core populations >10,000; n = 43). Analogues among metropolitan and agglomeration areas were generated and spatial clustering was used to identify groups of highly-suitable parcels within urban areas. Lastly, individual parcels can be interrogated for overall suitability or individual criteria scores. Our approach combines retail methods typically used in isolation (e.g. location quotient, Huff’s model, network analysis) and demonstrates how a simple survey can be used to weight criteria. Results show that survey respondents were in general agreement and that top-line revenues were more critical to perceived location success than development and operational costs. Analysis of suitability scores found analogues and clusters of census metropolitan areas that coincide with store sales as well as clusters of highly suitable parcels predominantly located around major highways. In addition to identifying challenges and solutions to the presented research, we also describe future research directions that extend the presented static analysis to include processes like store closure and openings, competition, and land use change through the use of agent-based modelling.

Mapping Racial Capital: Gentrification, Race and Value in Three Chicago Neighborhoods

We interrogate the interrelations of race and gentrification in three Chicago neighborhoods of historical significance to Black, Mexican, and Puerto Rican residents. Our previous work indicates that historical legacies of structural racism mean that gentrification works differently in each area, although the extant literature has not directly addressed how race fuels local valuation regimes. For each neighborhood we provide GIS mapping of 30 years of property parcel data and Census block data on race, compared with a parcel level visual scan of material conditions in the built environment. Changes in value at the block level reveal value assigned to whiteness irrespective of material improvement and run counter to standard explanations of gentrification but closely align with a model of racial capitalism. We bridge the gap between qualitative and quantitative research by mapping the everyday life of racial change that is felt and known by residents of color in Chicago.

Bivariate representation of population density using public and private drinking and wastewater infrastructure

Abstract. Drinking and wastewater infrastructure consists of both public and private usage. On each property parcel, drinking water can be privately provided by a well or publicly provided through a municipality. Wastewater can be a private septic tank or a public sewer. Property parcels can use all private, all public, or a combination of public and private solutions. It is important for planners and city officials to have knowledge of these systems, and it is also important to know the number of people using each type of infrastructure to prioritize resources and plan for future expansions. Visualizing the complexity of these data using separate univariate maps is aesthetically inferior involving back and forth comparisons. Further, the univariate maps represent land parcels only and do not capture the population that is using each type of water infrastructure. Our research develops a single bivariate map that facilitates the visualization of population using both public and private drinking and wastewater solutions simultaneously. The bivariate map is tended for use by planners, city officials, environmentalists, and others interested in the visualization of the spatial patterns of water infrastructure within one complete map.

Analyzing the Influence of Metro Stations on Commercial Property Values in Delhi: A Hedonic Approach

Abstract The effect of proximity to a transit system on property values has become a key issue of debate regarding public infrastructure and economic development. This article aims to examine the impact of selected stations along the Blue line of Delhi Mass Rapid Transit System (MRTS) on commercial property prices. The research analyzed 1,413 commercial property parcels sold before and after the commissioning of Blue line in 2005. Hedonic Price Analysis (HPA) was used to estimate the effects of proximity to the metro rail on commercial property values. The method was applied to two time periods, i.e., from 2000-2004 and 2005-2008, coinciding with planning and construction (pre-commissioning phase and the operation phase (post-commissioning phase) of metro rail using actual sale prices of commercial units. The results indicate that a station node shows a negative trend during the planning and construction period. However, the operation period has produced a significant price premium associated with commercial properties, connected with improved accessibility. The coefficients indicate that MRTS has induced an increase in prices from INR 732.80 to INR 246.19, and its radius of impact covers an area of approximately 1/2 km from the stations. The methodology and results provide insight with a specific focus on commercial real estate values in other metropolitan cities developing and expanding MRTSs.

De jure property rights and state capacity: evidence from land specification in the Boer Republics

AbstractWe examine the development of de jure property rights to land by assessing how accurately governments recorded borders of property. We use surveys of farm parcels from two historical states, the Republic of the Orange Free State (OFS) and the South African Republic (ZAR), which are in modern-day South Africa, and employ a descriptive analysis to infer how accurately maps represent parcels of property. We argue that differences in state administrative capacity explains differences in map accuracy and therefore the provision of de jure property rights to land. We find that maps of farms in the ZAR, which had lower administrative capacity, tend to be less accurate than maps of farms in the OFS. Comparisons with military maps compiled under a different administration provide evidence that the costs incurred from previous administrations can limit future attempts to accurately record property. The analysis shows how state administrative capacity can facilitate (or hinder) the provision of property rights to land.

Beauty or Blight? Abundant Vegetation in the Presence of Disinvestment Across Residential Parcels and Neighborhoods in Toledo, OH

Urban vegetation can generate social and ecological benefits, so vegetation abundance is commonly treated as a proxy for greater benefits. A repeated finding in environmental justice research related to urban vegetation is that commonly marginalized populations live in neighborhoods with less vegetation. However, urban vegetation can function as amenity or disamenity depending on the context and the characteristics of the vegetation. In areas of disinvestment, overgrown vegetation may indicate neglect and lead to negative social outcomes. For example, previous research in the shrinking city of Toledo, Ohio, showed that areas with concentrated residential vacancy and high representation of traditionally marginalized populations also had relatively high vegetation abundance. This can be largely attributed to spontaneous, weedy vegetation in areas of concentrated vacancy. Equal vegetation cover therefore should not necessarily be equated with environmentally just outcomes. Here, we used several high-resolution data sets to study the relationships among vegetation abundance, vegetation quality, and property parcel occupancy on residential land in Toledo. Our results demonstrate that vacant residential land had more abundant vegetation than comparable occupied parcels according to two common metrics (tree canopy cover and the normalized difference vegetation index). Compared to occupied parcels, vacant parcels also had higher rates of blight associated with overgrown vegetation, as recorded during a citywide ground-based survey of property conditions. There were more vacant parcels overall in areas of disinvestment, and on a per-parcel basis, vacant parcels in these high-vacancy areas were also greener relative to nearby occupied parcels than vacant parcels in low-vacancy areas. This indicates that vacant parcels play a disproportionately large role in greening on residential land in areas of disinvestment. These results reinforce the idea that simply quantifying vegetation abundance may be insufficient for understanding urban social-ecological outcomes. Incorporating parcel occupancy data along with multiple strands of information about vegetation type and condition provides context to understand where abundant vegetation functions as amenity versus disamenity. These perspectives are especially relevant in shrinking cities like Toledo where legacies of urban socioeconomic change have produced widespread areas of disinvestment and land abandonment.

MEASURES AND SIGNIFICANCE OF AUDIT IN THE REGULATORY ASSESSMENT OF LAND RESOURCES OF UKRAINE

The article substantiates that the introduction of a new normative monetary valuation of agricultural land will lead to losses of the revenue base of budgets for individual territorial communities, as well as a decrease in tax revenues to the budgets of local governments. It was proposed to provide the status of public information of technical documentation on the normative monetary valuation of land parcels, as well as reports of expert monetary valuation of land parcels of state and communal property of Ukraine for tax purposes, the calculation and payment of other mandatory payments, which will allow transparently assess the state of resources for their further effective use.

Yards increase forest connectivity in urban landscapes

Tree canopy connectivity is important for supporting biodiversity. In urban landscapes, empirical examinations of habitat connectivity often overlook residential land, though yards and gardens often comprise a large portion of urban forests. We quantify structural composition (patches and paths), connectivity and fragmentation of an entire tree canopy network spanning 1220 Boston’s neighborhoods to assess the configuration of the urban forest potentially affecting tree-dependent wildlife species, such as some birds and arboreal mammals. The urban landscape was classified by land use, and residential yards were further subdivided into front yards, backyards, and corner yards. Structural composition, connectivity and fragmentation of the tree canopy was assessed using morphological spatial pattern and network analysis. Canopy metrics were then related to the land use of 349,305 property parcels. Back yard tree canopy cover was 65.23%. The majority of canopy links were on residential land (60.95% total), and particularly in backyards. Back yards contained the highest number of canopy fragments (48.65% total). Fragmentation of the canopy network peaked at ~ 23% of total canopy cover. Canopy fragmentation, distance among patches and their shape complexity were lower in neighborhoods with more tree canopy. The important role that yards have in sustaining canopy connectivity across urban landscapes poses challenges and opportunities. Urban land management and planning need to protect connectivity links within urban forests when located on private residential realm. A prioritization strategy aimed at expanding urban tree cover could focus on yards to ensure that urban landscape connectivity is maintained and increased.

Local Parcel Taxes in California Cities and Counties: New Findings From a New Database

This paper presents findings from newly compiled data on parcel tax ballot measures in California counties, cities, and special districts. Unique in California, a parcel tax is commonly understood as a lump-sum tax applied to parcels of real property to finance local public services. Although parcel tax ballot measures have become more frequent, studies are rare on the scope and use of parcel taxes in local governments. To fill this gap, I collected and analyzed a comprehensive list of local parcel tax ballot measures in counties and cities from 1995 to 2017. Using the data, I describe how parcel taxes are designed and implemented in local governments and discusses avenues of future research.

Plant–Human Commoning: Navigating Enclosure, Neoliberal Conservation, and Plant Mobility in Exurban Landscapes

Conservation on private land in exurban landscapes is habitually framed around the private property parcel. Neoliberal conservation programs that position private property as exclusive territory for conservation action are compounding the property-centric focus of exurban conservation practices. This framing conflicts with an understanding of ecologies as socionatures that are geographically dispersed and temporally contingent, as well as the implications of landscape-scale species migration driven by climate change. Here we explore whether the agency and mobility of plants across property boundaries offer an avenue for more meaningful alternatives to exurban conservation that are not bounded by the territory of private property. The conservation practices of exurban landholders in Victoria, Australia, were explored through qualitative interviews and property walks. The mobility of plants in the form of spreading, seeding, and suckering through fence lines reflects a form of more-than-human territorial enactment that can bring attention to shared and relational ecologies, while unsettling the notion of control over conservation practice that accompanies property ownership. We explore the potential of the recent reengagement with commoning—in the form of plant–human commoning practices—to position plants as active collaborators in commoning, rather than as the objects of human commoning. Although attentive to the challenges of multispecies coalitions in conservation, we suggest that plant–human commoning could offer new possibilities for conservation that is grounded in the affordances of plants, as a counter to neoliberal governance and the individualization and privatization of exurban landscapes.

Government Prevails on Appeal in Case Construing Scope of Trust Charitable Deduction

The US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, on January 12, held that the amount of a charitable contribution deduction that a trust may properly claim in connection with its gift of three parcels of real property is limited to its adjusted basis in the properties (Green v. United States). The district court's decision, which held that the deduction is based on the property's fair market value and was reversed, is summarized in the January 2016 issue.

Co-opting and resisting market based instruments for private land conservation

The increasing popularity of private land conservation (PLC) globally has quickly translated into an array of polices and programs aimed at achieving ecological benefits. The growth of PLC is entwined with the rise of neoliberal governance, with private land proving congruous with the promotion of market-based instruments (MBIs) and the reliance on private protected areas for conservation in lieu of government investment in public lands. Despite a growing literature on the implications of neoliberal environmental governance, there remains a need for specific insights into the way that individual landholders and ecologies can co-opt or resist the rationalities of MBIs in the practice of private land conservation. Through semi-structured interviews and property walks with 18 landholders, this research examines the implementation of a reverse-auction tender scheme called ‘EcoTender’ in Victoria, Australia. We uncovered four main tensions between the market logic of the program and conservation practice: 1) some landholders used the payment scheme to increase regulatory protections on their property through covenants/easements; 2) many landholders struggled to conceive of their stewardship practice as contractual labour; 3) landholders were producing novel ecosystems that challenged land management focused at the property parcel scale when EcoTender encouraged a return to historical benchmark ecologies, and; 4) many landholders wanted social collaboration when the program required competition for cost efficiency. Our insights show that PLC must create room for a diverse trajectory of conservation practice in dynamic socio-ecological contexts. This means careful reflection on the validity of assumptions underpinning MBIs, the trade-offs that come with applying market logic to conservation and the long-term implications of these instruments for policy and practice.

The verified neighbor approach to geoprivacy: An improved method for geographic masking.

Geographic information adds a powerful component to environmental epidemiology studies but can compromise subject confidentiality. Although locations are often masked by perturbing spatial coordinates, existing masks do not ensure that the perturbation area contains a sufficient number of valid surrogates to prevent disclosure, nor are they designed to minimize perturbation while maintaining a specified level of privacy. I introduce a new approach to geoprivacy in which real property parcel data with information about land use are used to develop a pool of verified neighbors. GIS (geographic information system) processing optionally restricts the pool to residences with values of environmental variables similar to those of the subject parcel. A surrogate is then randomly selected from the k members of the pool closest to the subject with k chosen to achieve the desired spatial privacy protection. The method guarantees the specified level of privacy even where population density is uneven while minimizing spatial distortion and changes to the values of environmental variables assigned to subjects. The method is illustrated with an example that found it to be more effective than random perturbation-based methods in both protecting privacy and preserving spatial fidelity to the original locations.

Implementing three-dimensional groundwater management in a Texas groundwater conservation district

The Guadalupe County Groundwater Conservation District has implemented a 3-dimensional water management solution that allocates pumping rights based on actual volumes in place under a tract. This new regime treats the aquifer as a “constant level lake” where rights holders are awarded the right to a percentage of the inflow (recharge) based on the volume of saturated sands underneath their property. Three-dimensional management can improve Texas groundwater governance by strengthening property rights, promoting conservation, and unlocking economic value by promoting water trading and collateralization. It is also cost-effective and can be rapidly implemented: the Guadalupe County Groundwater Conservation District created its initial 3-dimensional ruleset in approximately 4 months at a cost of roughly $15,000. Larger districts or districts that could not benefit from an existing property parcel map created by an appraisal district would face higher costs. Creating the type of property ownership maps used by local tax appraisal districts can cost as much as $100,000. Yet the intensive property tax regime in Texas means that even the least-populous counties typically already have such information available in digital form. Quantifying the available water volume beneath each property and making pumping rights transferrable between wells profoundly transforms groundwater management and confers clear vested rights to water in place. As such, it can provide economic recourse to smaller water holders even in areas where municipalities and other large pumpers enter the district. In short, this forward-looking, conservation-oriented new ruleset provides a way for Texas groundwater stewards to move past flat surface acreage-based allocations and move into an era where a handful of large pumpers in a district do not erode the property rights of smaller holders. Quantifying water in place involves averaging and making certain approximations and generalizations because of the inevitably complex nature of geologic formations. Over time, groundwater conservation districts and their constituent members will determine how deeply to engage that complexity. The bottom line is that 3-dimensional management offers an exponential degree of improvement over existing Texas groundwater management models. The Guadalupe County Groundwater Conservation District’s ruleset embraces a philosophy of iterative learning and improvement and acknowledges that employing models as tools of governance always involves approximations. It handles this by including the capacity to rapidly update and revise its approach as the district obtains additional data points and insights through operational implementation of its rules. Citation: Blumberg H, Collins G. 2016. Implementing three-dimensional groundwater management in a Texas groundwater conservation district. Texas Water Journal. 6(1): 69-81. Available from: https://doi.org/10.21423/twj.v7i1.7037.

Prioritizing Riparian Conservation: A Methodology Developed for the Santa Clara River, California

Riparian ecosystems perform many important ecological functions, but human activities have seriously altered and degraded these systems. To avoid continued habitat loss and associated losses in biodiversity, lands that contain intact riparian habitat can be acquired and managed for conservation values and degraded riparian areas can be restored. The Nature Conservancy (the Conservancy) is implementing a riparian conservation project on the Santa Clara River in Ventura County, California that includes both approaches. Because larger restoration projects have faster recovery rates and are more self-sustaining, the Conservancy is protecting and restoring as much contiguous riparian habitat as possible using a “conservation nodes” approach. To this end, we have begun acquisition of high-value parcels, and have developed a methodology for prioritizing additional land acquisition and restoration actions on the river. The methodology is based on quantitative measures of five criteria for 68 discrete parcels of real property contained within five nodes designated as high priority for conservation. The criteria were combined into a score for each parcel. We found that the five nodes varied in terms of their average parcel score, and in terms of the completeness of parcel acquisition. Nine of the top 20 scoring parcels have yet to be acquired by a conservation entity. We also found that the potential conservation value to be gained by restoring all of the parcels within a node varies by node. Conservation entities using this prioritization approach can phase implementation of large-scale projects by allowing restoration work to begin while acquisition efforts continue.