Ground Truthing Vacant Lot Recommendations
The City of Cleveland Planning Commission, in partnership with the Western Reserve Land Conservancy and local Community Development Corporations, is leading a land use planning exercise to ground truth land within Cleveland’s neighborhoods.
Ground truthing is a process like the 2022 Citywide Property Survey: the Commission will develop a map of vacant parcels with data-driven land use recommendations, and residents will confirm or challenge that designation.
Through this process the City will develop a list of sites prioritized for uses such as Transit Oriented Development, infill missing middle and 1/2/3 family homes, commercial uses, side yards, and nature based solutions (trees, urban farms, community gardens, parks, etc.) with the goals of developing a new mix of housing in Cleveland’s neighborhoods, advancing the 15-minute city initiative by helping Clevelanders live near transit and daily needs or amenities, restoring the city’s tree canopy, enabling community ownership of land, and addressing the large amount of vacant city-owned land.
How does it work?
Commission Staff have developed an iterative process for designating and evaluating land use for land bank parcels:
Land bank lots are filtered for only those within the TOD Zone (~5 minute walk from high frequency transit stops, both bus and rail), and assigned uses with their 15-minute city index score attached.
Teams of residents are recruited and trained in partnership with the local community development corporation to understand the goals and process, and to use the Fieldmaps ESRI app to ground truth the parcels. Residents are paid $20/hour.
These residents then ground truth – a process by which they walk their neighborhood streets and evaluate the condition of each parcel as they see it on the ground. Parcels the city has designated for development may have large healthy trees on them or be in use already by a neighbor. Residents can use our app to propose alternative uses for each parcel.
Ground truthed parcels are then reviewed by staff and the local councilmember before a final land use determination is made by the City. The goal is to balance existing uses and conditions of land with the need for investment in Cleveland’s neighborhoods.
Final land use designations are then folded into the City’s general plan and used to better inform residents, developers, and businesses on which city parcels are available for various uses.
After a pilot in Slavic Village, we are currently expanding this work in Mt. Pleasant, Kinsman, Union-Miles, St. Clair Superior, & Hough