What to do with the empty parts of Detroit?

Wayne County will try to auction off 9,000 abandoned, tax delinquent lots at a sale scheduled for October 19, but it seems unlikely that the empty lots will sell, and even if they do, it’s unclear how this will benefit Detroit, the Free Press reports.

An estimated 40 square miles of the city’s 139 square miles of land are now vacant, an amount of land roughly the size of San Francisco or Boston.

The foreclosure crisis has added significantly to the problem. Detroit’s Office of Foreclosure Prevention said last week that 17.3% of Detroit’s residences had gone through foreclosure through the end of 2008, with many more added this year.

Two years ago, during the 2007 auction, the county listed about 2,000 tax-delinquent properties for sale, [Terrance Keith, Wayne County’s deputy treasurer] said. This year, following the collapse of the real estate market and the nation’s economy, almost 9,000 properties are to go on the block during the auction, which can last up to three days.

Reporter John Gallagher interviews University of Michigan urban planning professor Margaret Dewar and Genesee County Treasurer Dan Kildee — both agree that auctioning off city land to speculators is a poor mechanism for urban redevelopment.