The Architectural League New York took an in-depth look back at "Vacant Lots", its 1987 collaboration with the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development. From the League's website we learn that "Vacant Lots" was a "design study examining the potential of small-scale infill housing to contribute to the city’s affordable housing portfolio. The study identified ten sites owned by the City in the Bronx, Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn that were representative of the types of small abandoned lots proliferating in the city at the time, and that were considered realistic prospects for development. The League’s charge to designers was to develop plans for these sites that could be prototypical solutions.
"Collected here is original material from the Vacant Lots book, a photo essay on Urban Omnibus of the ten sites today and a survey of contemporary initiatives for housing New Yorkers, and excerpts of recent conversations with Mark Willis and members of the Vacant Lots organizing committee: Carol Willis, Deborah Gans, Brian McGrath, Mark Robbins, and Rosalie Genevro." Resources include:
- Roundtable: Deborah Gans, Rosalie Genevro, Brian McGrath, Mark Robbins, Carol Willis
- A Conversation with Mark Willis
- “The Breached Wall” by Herbert Muschamp
- The Vacant Lots Study Project
- Vacant Lots: Then and Now
- New York Housing
- The Cost of Living
- City of Imagination
- Writing the Program
- Prototypical Solutions