A media-based evaluation of the land bank in Detroit, Michigan: citizen and institutional perspectives

Land banks in the United States have increasingly expanded their programmes to revitalize communities by acquiring and managing neglected properties. While they are often praised for benefiting communities, criticism has emerged over their operational downsides, such as a lack of transparency, developer-centred practices, and issues of racial discrimination. Following a period of rapid growth in the 2010s, when several land banks in the United States were established and supported by state-led legislation, a detailed evaluation of their operations became necessary; however, studies have not given sufficient weight to the immense volume of citizen opinion data. This study addresses this limitation by evaluating the operational performance of the Detroit Land Bank Authority (DLBA) based in Detroit, MI, using importance–performance analysis (IPA) based on LDA topic modelling, sentiment analysis, and SHAP-based importance. It utilizes Google Maps reviews (n = 97) and Reddit posts and comments (n = 1263) from Detroit, which has a long history of land banking programmes and where issues of urban vacancy have persisted. It also reviews local news quotations (n = 222) representing institutionally oriented narratives, comparing discrepancies between user-generated perspectives and those reflected in local news across the available study periods. The IPA results identified Customer Service as a priority concern in Google Maps reviews, while Tax and Administrative Issues and Urban Issues and Programmes emerged as key areas requiring attention on Reddit. In local news quotations, Community and Finance emerged as an area requiring attention, whereas Vacant House Maintenance and Administrative Procedures were evaluated relatively favorably. Overall, the results reveal clear differences in the issues emphasized across user-generated and traditional media, suggesting a gap between user experiences and institutionally oriented narratives. Based on these findings, land banks should further emphasize on service responsiveness, administrative efficiency, and financial transparency to better align institutional operations with user concerns.