What if green interventions in vulnerable neighborhoods reduces gun violence?
It would almost seem too easy. Recently, in an Opinion Essay for the New York Times entitled, To Combat Gun Violence, Clean Up the Neighborhood, we learned about an interesting initiative by Dr. Eugenia C. South, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and faculty director of the Urban Health Lab. She and her colleagues, Charles Branas and John MacDonald, conducted two large-scale studies where they chose places to receive a “green” intervention in an effort to determine the correlation with crime rates. As Landscape Architects, the findings were very intriguing.
As is well documented, in urban areas, a very small number of streets account for a high number of violent crimes. Studies have shown that, “roughly 5–7% of street segments accounted for 50% of violent crime incidents”. Not surprisingly, most of these streets are in low income, segregated neighborhoods that have endured decades of structural racism – redlining, disenfranchisement, physical deterioration and economic hardship. Streets blighted with boarded up houses, vacant, garbage-strewn lots littered with junked cars and overgrown weeds that block sight-lines. Communities where hot, asphalt and concrete-clad streets with little to no tree canopy, and thus respite from sun, wind, cold, rain, are the norm.
South and her team, in partnership with the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, “randomly selected hundreds of lots across Philadelphia to receive either this clean and green intervention, trash cleanup only or no intervention at all”. The interventions included, “planting new grass and trees, installing low wooden post-and-rail fences around the perimeter and performing regular maintenance”. Here’s what they found. In the most critical neighborhoods, those living below the poverty line, the blocks surrounding the vacant lots that were greened and cleaned saw the sharpest drop in gun violence – up to 29% – and that crime did not migrate to other parts of the city. This bears out in other studies conducted all over the country. "There is evidence that greening interventions at the urban level reduces violent crime, specifically gun violence," said Hessam Sadatsafavi, PhD, of UVA's Department of Emergency Medicine.
Community members felt safer, socialized more, felt less depressed, contributing to an overall uptick in well-being. When your surroundings are cared for and valued, you feel supported and valued as a human being. And there’s something else, South and her team discovered that in Philly, for every $1 invested in greening, society saves up to $333 that would otherwise be spent on policing, medicine and incarceration. That is not a high price to pay for a return on investment that is potentially through the roof.
At Mantle, we laud this study as a way of bringing a measurable understanding of the importance of investments made in our shared communal spaces. And, while this is a great step forward, there is too little research being done on the importance of landscape as a vital component of our cities’ infrastructure.
While more research is critical in order to garner the funds needed to make an impact on a broader scale, it is the non-profits, community members, and volunteers who simply roll up their sleeves, get in the weeds, and green-up one-vacant-lot-at-a-time in the most vulnerable neighborhoods, that we celebrate. Here are some of those organizations, and some inspiring stories, we will add more as we hear about them!
The Conscious Project | Springfield, OH
Grounded | Pittsburgh, PA
Lots to Love | Pittsburgh, PA
From Lot to Spot | Los Angeles, CA
Detroit Hives | Detroit, MI