Detroit is sitting on roughly 122,929 vacant lots, about 18 square miles of land with no structures on it. From skinny side yards to multi-acre parcels, that is a lot of grass to mow and an even bigger set of choices for what comes next. Residents, planners and the land bank say the scale of emptiness now on the map forces a clearer conversation about where to put parks, urban farms and targeted infill housing.
The latest tally was detailed by Detroit News reporter Louis Aguilar and then picked up by Deadline Detroit today. That coverage ties the number to parcel-level counts and to years of demolition that have turned once-occupied blocks into long runs of structure-free lots.
Where the numbers come from
There is no single, tidy statistic for Detroit’s emptiness. An October 2025 report from Detroit Future City notes the city has more than 100,000 vacant lots, and that roughly 59,000 of those parcels are publicly owned by the land bank. The group argues that many of the lots are too small or too scattered for traditional redevelopment, which is why it is pitching a land-conservancy model to oversee clusters of open space instead of chasing one-off projects.
What the city and land bank hold
The Detroit Land Bank Authority has quietly shifted its center of gravity. Where it once spotlighted rehabbing houses, it now spends much of its energy managing a very large public-land portfolio. The city says the DLBA has helped return thousands of vacant homes to productive use and runs programs such as side-lot and neighborhood-lot sales. The City of Detroit also reports that many properties have already been turned into yards and community gardens, while BridgeDetroit found the DLBA’s inventory included about 60,823 vacant lots in mid-2024, with more than 28,000 parcels held in land review for planned projects.
Neighbors and nonprofits are acting
On the ground, residents and neighborhood groups are not waiting for a grand master plan. Across the city, nonprofit organizations and block clubs are knitting together clusters of lots into small parks, urban farms and community hubs. Michigan Public documented Detroit Future City and Arboretum Detroit’s Circle Forest, a 1.3-acre project made from connected lots, and covered DFC’s proposal for a Detroit GreenSpace Conservancy that would own and steward larger open-space parcels.
Policy choices and costs
Turning a sea of vacant lots into long-term public goods is not free. Center for Community Progress warns that Detroit is already spending public dollars just to maintain all that empty land. The group also points out that programs such as the Pay As You Stay property-tax plan are heading toward a 2026 expiration date and will need attention. Its recommendations include creating a unified Plan Detroit, tightening DLBA governance and building an “integrated open space network” to coordinate how land is acquired, used and cared for…