PolicyMap at the Vacant Properties Conference

The 2013 Reclaiming Vacant Properties Conference is in Philadelphia this week, and the PolicyMap team is in attendance! The conference, put on annually by the Center for Community Progress, brings together representatives from cities and neighborhoods nationwide who are dealing with vacant property issues together to share experiences, best practices, tools, and resources.

If you are attending the conference, please stop by our booth today (Tuesday, September 10) and tomorrow to say hello or see a demonstration. We’ve made many friends so far, including an extremely cute new spokesfurson:

It is always an inspiration for us to see practitioners use data in their work. A particularly interesting session featured brownfield redevelopment projects in the City of Tampa, where the city worked with the community to utilize multiple federal funding sources to create “Healthfields,” including parks, public safety amenities, and some of the Federally Qualified Health Centers on the map below:

Adding to our excitement is an upcoming partnership between PolicyMap and Valassis Direct Mail to provide our subscribers with postal vacancy data at the block group level — the same data used by the HUD and the US Postal Service to measure quarterly residential and business vacancy. Look for a more detailed announcement in the coming weeks.

We look forward to staying connected with the great people we’ve met at this conference!