In 1987, the Architectural League of New York and the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HUD) partnered to complete a unique design study called Vacant Lots. 25 years ago, New York City’s population was in decline, bringing about rampant real estate abandonment and disinvestment. As a result, the City seized thousands of properties, ranging from occupied, dilapidated buildings to deserted spaces. 

The Vacant Lots study identified ten of these properties — sites that “could be developed by small-scale contractors or community-based development groups [and] could be the basis of a new strategy for reweaving the fabric of neighborhoods" — and invited architects to submit prototypical designs for the lots, taking into account the social and physical context of each site, and essentially making the case for small-scale infill housing as a feasible option for providing affordable housing in the city. 

25 years later, the League's Urban Omnibus revisited these sites — three in The Bronx, three in Brooklyn, three in Queens and one in Manhattan — to compare what was proposed and what was built instead.

As a project associate with Urban Omnibus, I searched through New York City’s Buildings Information System (BIS) and Automated City Register System (ACRIS), and also visited and photographed each lot in order to uncover what has happened with the properties since the 1980’s. Many have become two-family dwellings, but one is still a vacant lot (due to halted construction because of multiple complaints by neighbors) and another has become a low-income housing unit.