New Orleans cuts blight by using data to predict official decisions

New Orleans partnered with tech developers to institute a data-driven blight reduction strategy that decreased the number of decaying houses by more than 15,000 in five years. Its centrepiece was a bespoke tool that converted qualitative property surveys into quantitative scores, advising officials whether a blighted property – a dwelling that has fallen into disrepair – should be demolished or sold. This eliminated a backlog of 1,500 cases. Tackling the city’s decaying housing has been a major priority since 2010, when New Orleans was thought to have more abandoned dwellings than Detroit.