Parcl Civic / Philadelphia and beyond
Better land intelligence.
Stronger communities.
Philadelphia helped shape Parcl. Through Stephen Arrivello’s leadership and our adaptation of the Code for Philly Clean & Green Philly project, improving neighborhoods remains central to the platform’s future.
01 — The mission
A civic commitment, not a discarded prototype.
After Kjell, Bryheim and Lloyd connected with Stephen Arrivello, who has served as Parcl’s chief executive. Stephen’s goals for Philadelphia helped guide Parcl toward the civic potential of property intelligence — supporting people working to improve vacant and underused properties.
That work was never charity software bolted onto a commercial product. It forced the platform to answer harder questions than a private deal does: What do you actually know about this parcel? When did you learn it? Who is allowed to act on it? What happens if you are wrong?
The answers became design requirements: provenance on every field, uncertainty made visible, human review before any suggestion becomes an intervention. Those requirements now apply to the whole platform, not just the civic layer.
Forward-looking
Parcl Civic is a roadmap, not an archived demo. The first phase is restoring trust in the data. Everything else follows from that.
Data provenance
What this data is.
And what it is not.
The original project stopped active development in July 2025 because reliable vacancy information became unavailable. Its archived vacancy indicators must never be presented as live, current inventory.
Archived — not liveJune 2024
Last reasonably reliable vacancy source
The archived Philadelphia vacancy data carries significant age and coverage limitations. It must not be displayed as a verified, current list of vacant lots.
July 2025
Final open-source project outputs
The pipeline’s last archived products include citywide parcel context. The original team ended active development because reliable vacancy inputs were no longer available.
Parcl roadmap
Revalidate before relaunch
Identify authorized current sources, add freshness indicators, document uncertainty, and require responsible human review of any suggested intervention.
Every future display is designed to expose observedAt, sourceUpdatedAt, validThrough, ingestedAt, uncertainty, coverage and quality flags. If a date cannot be established, the record says so rather than guessing.
What it supports
Property intelligence in the service of people.
Not a list of lots to buy. A shared picture of what is stuck, who is responsible, and where a small intervention could change a block.
The roadmap
Trust first. Then tools.
01
Restore data trust
Identify authorized current sources. Document provenance, freshness and uncertainty. Refuse to publish what cannot be defended.
02
Rebuild property discovery
A city-neutral property schema, an accessible map, and a mobile-first experience that works on the phone in someone’s hand on the block.
03
Support community action
Intervention planning, coordination between organizations, and documentation of environmental work over time.
04
Make it reusable
Open read APIs, portable exports and partner integrations — so other cities are not forced to rebuild the same foundation.
Civic first
More complex Bitcoin or regulated-asset infrastructure should remain optional rather than creating barriers for civic users. Public property intelligence does not need a wallet, and should never need one.
05 — Credit & license
Built by volunteers. Credited by name.
Clean & Green Philly is an independent civic project created and led by Nissim Lebovits, with more than fifty volunteers and organizations. It is MIT licensed, © 2023 Code for Philly. Parcl’s adaptation preserves that license, attribution and project history.
PROJECT
Nissim Lebovits
Created and led Clean & Green Philly, and testified to Philadelphia City Council on its behalf in April 2024.
TEAM
Volunteers
Will Budreau (user testing and research), Brandon Cohen (lead developer), Nathaniel Sidwell (UX) and many others.
THANKS
Code for Philly
Jon Geeting, Dante Leonard, Mjumbe Poe and Vicky Tam, for the civic infrastructure that made the project possible.
RESEARCH
Dr. Eugenia South
Whose work on greening vacant land and violence reduction grounded the original project’s purpose.
What we will not do
Present archived vacancy data as a current inventory, or imply that a property is available.
Require a wallet, token, KYC or on-chain payment to access basic public property information.
Certify that a property is safe to enter, legally accessible, or a sound investment.
Claim organizational succession or official endorsement of the original Code for Philly initiative.
Philadelphia
The city that shaped the platform.
If you work on vacant property, neighborhood redevelopment or public data in Philadelphia, we would like to compare notes — including where our data is still wrong.