Standardize on better terminology for "vacant"

[larsiusprime]

Does "vacant" mean "vacant lot" or "unoccupied building" ?

We need to standardize on this and cleanup terminology throughout the codebase.

• Pick better terms
• Fix everything to use the better terms
• Clean up variable names
• Test that nothing breaks

[valtyriel]

As discussed on Discord, "Unimproved" for vacant land and "Unoccupied" and/or "abandoned" for vacant buildings.

[larsiusprime]

That's a good start, the trick is that there's several gradations for each case.

"Vacant lot"

• Any lot that doesn't have a building on it
• An uncleared, ungraded, unleveled, unsurveyed, truly raw piece of dirt just out in the wilderness
• A fully cleared, graded, leveled, surveyed, "finished", truly buildable space in the middle of a city, that happens to have no building on it
• A mostly empty lot that just has like, a tiny shed on it (some assessors will count this as a "vacant lot" if the built square footage is below some small number N)

"Vacant building"

• A building that doesn't have any people living in it right now
• A building that the US Postal Service has registered as not currently receiving mail
• A dilapidated building in absolutely terrible shape
• A building that has been specifically condemned by the city and marked for demolition
• A dilapidated building in absolutely terrible shape, and marked as such on its exterior by boarding up its door and windows

So the trick with "unimproved" as a synonym for "vacant lot" is that there is such a thing as "site improvements." They're not always well captured by the local appraisal jurisdiction, but they are a thing. Then for vacant buildings you can have unoccupied buildings that are still in good shape but aren't quite abandoned (though that's somewhat rare).

Not trying to be too nit picky, just expounding on the surface area of this problem as whatever word we choose is likely to stick, so we should have a little back and forth before we decide on a term. What do you think?