This is an index of redevelopment potential for individual properties in Philadelphia and other cities. The application to real estate is obvious, but I can also see a number of applications to public policy. For example, changes to codes and ordinances can improve the overall health, safety, and environmental impact of a city. But these get implemented slowly and incrementally, especially in older cities with fixed boundaries, where most development is redevelopment. If you had a reasonable prediction of where and when redevelopment is likely to occur, you would know which areas to sit back and be patient, and which areas of the city to intervene more directly if you want to see change on any reasonable time frame.

It’s a little bit of a shame the person is not sharing their methodology. I’ve had a number of urban planners and economists tell me over the years this is very hard to do, and seen a few try and give up. So this is either brilliant, or it is little more than a guess. If it’s brilliant it could be very valuable indeed, so I guess I can see the financial incentive not to publish the details. But there is no way to know the difference without knowing how it is done. The author could at least publish a white paper showing some back testing of the algorithm against historic data.