"No property is an island" might be what John Donne would have penned if he had been reflecting upon the abandoned and deteriorating property next door to his own house. City of Knoxville Neighborhood coordinator David Massey will talk about the impact of blight on a community as he reviews Bringing Buildings Back: From Abandoned Properties to Community Assets, by Alan Mallach in this month's Brown Bag, Green Book program, Wednesday, April 18, 12 pm in the East Tennessee History Center, 601 South Gay Street.

"Mallach is a principal in the Center for Community Progress, a nationally acclaimed team of experts who have assisted the City of Knoxville and other Tennessee cities in efforts to adopt a more proactive approach to abandoned, blighted and vacant properties," Massey says. "His work is exhaustive in its detailed explanation of the tools and best practices used across the country, including Knoxville, to combat blight."

In Bringing Buildings Back, Mallach pulls together insights from law, economics, planning, and design to address all sides of the problem, from how abandonment can be prevented to how best to bring these properties back into productive reuse.

"The real value of the book is Malach's approach to thinking strategically about why blight occurs, why it persists, and how a community can unite around a strategy to turn vacant and blighted places into livable spaces," Massey says.

The public is invited to join the conversation and bring a lunch or pick up something from a downtown restaurant. Copies of the books are available at the Library if you'd like to read one before the program.

The series will continue on May 16, when Dr. Agricola Odoi, Associate Professor in UT's College of Veterinary Medicine will talk about Changing Planet, Changing Health: How the Climate Crisis Threatens Our Health and What We Can Do about It by Paul R. Epstein

On June 20, Dr. John Nolt, UT Professor of Philosophy, will talk about the book he edited, A Land Imperiled: The Declining Health of the Southern Appalachian Bioregion.

On July 18, Dr. Lou Gross, UT Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Mathematics will talk about the book Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway.

For more information, please call Emily Ellis at 215-8723.