Greening vacant lots to reduce violent crime: a randomised controlled trial
Open accessAbstract
Background: Vacant lots are often overgrown with unwanted vegetation and filled with trash, making them attractive places to hide illegal guns, conduct illegal activities such as drug sales and prostitution, and engage in violent crime. There is some evidence that greening vacant lots is associated with reductions in violent crime. Methods: We performed a randomised controlled trial of vacant lot greening to test the impact of this intervention on police reported crime and residents' perceptions of safety and disorder. Greening consisted of cleaning the lots, planting grass and trees, and building a wooden fence around the perimeter. We randomly allocated two vacant lot clusters to the greening intervention or to the control status (no intervention). Administrative data were used to determine crime rates, and local resident interviews at baseline (n=29) and at follow-up (n=21) were used to assess perceptions of safety and disorder. Results: Unadjusted difference-in-differences estimates showed a non-significant decrease in the number of total crimes and gun assaults around greened vacant lots compared with control. People around the intervention vacant lots reported feeling significantly safer after greening compared with those living around control vacant lots (p<0.01). Conclusions: In this study, greening was associated with reductions in certain gun crimes and improvements in residents' perceptions of safety. A larger randomised controlled trial is needed to further investigate the link between vacant lot greening and violence reduction.
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Few community-based gun violence programs explicitly aim to also address the traumas of structural violence that contribute to gun crime, including dehumanizing policing, extreme poverty, and institutional racism.
“Yet, few of these approaches explicitly aim to also address the traumas of structural violence that contribute to gun crime, including dehumanizing policing, extreme poverty, and institutional racism.”
From A healing-centered approach to preventing urban gun violence: The Advance Peace Model (2021) · cites this paper as Garvin et al., 2013
The Introduction and Conclusions discuss vacant-lot greening as a place-based approach to violence prevention, not whether community-based gun violence programs address structural violence. Searches for structural violence, dehumanizing policing, extreme poverty, and institutional racism found no passage supporting the attributed claim. Page numbers are unavailable in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.77)
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Urban Green Space and Its Impact on Human Health
Kondo, M., Fluehr, J., McKeon, T., & Branas, C. (2018) · International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health · doi:10.3390/ijerph15030445 · Cited by 1,187 · see citing works
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The enduring impact of historical and structural racism on urban violence in Philadelphia
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A healing-centered approach to preventing urban gun violence: The Advance Peace Model
Corburn, J., Boggan, D., Muttaqi, K., Vaughn, S., Houston, J., Thibodeaux, J., & Muhammad, B. (2021) · Humanities and Social Sciences Communications · doi:10.1057/s41599-021-00820-y · Cited by 21 · see citing works
- Authors
- Garvin, E. C., Cannuscio, C. C., & Branas, C. C.
- Affiliations
- University of Pennsylvania (US)
- Corresponding author
- Garvin, Eugenia C
- Venue
- Injury Prevention
- Publisher
- BMJ
- Published
- 2012-08-07
- Volume
- 19
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 198-203
- ISSN
- 1353-8047 (ISSN-L)
- 1475-5785
- PMC
- PMC3988203
- OpenAlex
- W2032351213
- Cited by
- 293
- References
- 3
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 22 · 2024: 19 · 2023: 15 · 2022: 47 · 2021: 31 · 2020: 24 · 2019: 26 · 2018: 24 · 2017: 26 · 2016: 16 · 2015: 16 · 2014: 10 · 2013: 8 · 2012: 1
- FWCI
- 36.77
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Injury Prevention (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- HighWire Press Open Archive (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (R01AA016187, R01AA020331)
- National Institute on Drug Abuse (R01DA010164)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Crime Patterns and Interventions
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis › Urban Green Space and Health
- Social Sciences › Urban Studies › Urbanization and City Planning
- Keywords
- vacant land, violent crime, crime prevention, perceived safety, urban disorder, police-reported crime
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Aged, Crime, Female, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Perception, Residence Characteristics, Safety, Social Behavior, Urban Renewal, Violence, Philadelphia, Environmental Restoration and Remediation, Young Adult
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