How Buildings Become Problems

This dissertation draws upon qualitative mixed methods to consider three mechanisms through which vacant and abandoned commercial and industrial buildings become constructed as problem properties by those residents living around them. The three papers, which make up this dissertation, draw on a wide array of literature from social movements and historic preservation to criminology and the sociology of culture in order to illuminate the many ways in which residents understand vacant and abandoned buildings.

The first paper examines how differences in mobilization draw attention and resources to some vacant and abandoned properties and not others. Using two cases—a vacant brewery complex and a vacant school—I argue that residents make mobilization decisions based on their perceptions of both present and future opportunities, choosing to mobilize when they anticipate greater relative opportunities for mobilization in the present than the future and delaying mobilization when they anticipate opportunities for mobilization will be better in the future.

The second paper looks at differences in the perception of vacant and abandoned historical buildings by preservationists. It pays particular attention to how preservationists’ temporal orientations inform when they see historic buildings as social problems. This paper asks: when does historic value insulate buildings from being perceived as problem properties?

The third paper demonstrates how residents perceive buildings as social problems. Building upon critiques of the “Broken Windows” hypothesis which argue that not all physical disorder stands out to residents as disorder, this paper argues that buildings that violate expectations that residents hold about buildings as private property become seen as out of place, and therefore as disorder. Focusing on expectations that buildings match their surrounding environment’s development trajectory and be cared for and used