[LouisVanDerWright]

^^^ Won't be a sea of empty lots for much longer if they keep buying them at this rate. That's like asking "man, who buys suburban tract housing, nothing but farm fields", except the vacant lots in Bronzeville are near the center of a nearly 10 million person metropolitian area.

Seems impossible to rebuild the parts of Chicago that have been gutted, but then consider how quickly this city was built and how quickly we build entire towns in the suburbs. If economic trends continue the way the have in the central area, we could find the entire "ghettos" of Chicago are completely rebuilt in a couple of decades.

So I say good riddance to these vacant lots and hope the trend continues, it is suprising to me, but I can see the logic in it. Once these homeowners who are undoubtably middle or upper middle class take over the area, we can expect what crime remains to plummet as "broken window theory" works in reverse and people with a strong financial stake in improving the community set up shop.