Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, City and Regional Planning

As a familiar landscape of American neighborhoods, vacant urban land evokes negative images and is often conceived as a barrier to sustainable development. To enhance the knowledge of vacant land and facilitate evidence-based policymaking, this research examines the relationship between vacant urban land and critical neighborhood sustainability measures in the largest Midwestern city, Chicago, Illinois. In particular, this research, consisting of three essays, offers an in-depth observation and investigation of the multidimensionality, reciprocal causality, and spatial heterogeneity of the relationship. This research has three primary findings: (1) the associations between vacant land and neighborhood sustainability measures are multidimensional and differ by individual measures, (2) vacant land has solid reciprocal associations with crime and poverty at the neighborhood scale over time, and (3) the associations between vacant land and neighborhood sustainability measures are spatially non-stationary. These findings encourage further studies to expand investigations to all sustainability dimensions and prompt vacant land management policies to be long-term and spatially adaptive for different urban contexts.

Committee: Maria Manta Conroy Ph.D. (Advisor); Mattijs van Maasakkers Ph.D. (Committee Member); Yasuyuki Motoyama Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Urban Planning