Many commercial real estate loans across the country will mature soon, and community banks will feel the strain if property owners can’t pay. One proposed solution, Redfields to Greenfields*, proposes to turn many of these empty and soon to be empty lots, into green spaces, gardens and parks. If these places are to be vacant, the plan is to at least make them, first, livable, and rebuild from there.

Georgia Tech Professor Ellen Dunham-Jones, author of Retrofitting Suburbia, explains the benefits of turning properties in the red, green.