Living in north Minneapolis, I’ve seen a lot of houses demolished over the past couple of years. I’m sure this is a real pain for the city – vacant lots contribute approximately nothing to the community. That said, I think it’s the right choice. Most of the houses I’ve seen demolished appeared to be way past the point where any reasonable renovator would touch them.
One thing Minneapolis could be doing to add some sort of value to vacant lots is to plant them with a prairie mix. Right now it looks like once the house is demolished they’re just leveled and left to sit. The city could easily equip their public works crews with a few bags of a MnDOT seed mix and have them spread seed after a demo. The rewards for this aren’t massive, but they are straightforward – nicer looking lots with wildflowers & prairie grasses are way better neighbors than lots with bare dirt and weeds. With essentially no outlay in expense, the city could make a difference, even a slight one, in property values and bird & insect habitat.
There are other proposals about what to do with vacant lots. This Daily Planet article has a comment offering a suggestion about community gardens that I’ve heard before, for example. The advantage of seeding with a prairie mix is that it’s not a case of doing one instead of the other. You can always plant prairie while you’re waiting for the paperwork to line up for a garden. Establishing a better mix of plants in urban areas is a cheap win-win.