Urban gardens are certainly a welcome addition to cityscapes, but that’s not all they are; new research shows that an increased presence of parks and other urban green spaces can actually reduce crime in the surrounding area.

While this field of research is relatively young, a few distinct examples have proven the ways in which urban gardens appear to reduce crime.

The Research: Crime and Urban Gardens

In Youngstown, Ohio, a city that was struggling with high unemployment in 2010, a decision was made to convert the 31 percent of the city’s land area that was vacant into urban gardens. Over a period of four years, this project advanced, and later, the community was invited to improve these various spaces as they liked, creating green spaces, community food gardens, and other spaces. A team of researchers examined crime data in these areas and found that since 2010, not only was violent crime reduced, but “spill-over” crime reduction occurred in nearby areas as well.

In 2000, Philadelphia launched a similar project to convert roadside gray spaces into plots to soak up rainwater. The same research team that studied the Youngstown crime rates found reduced narcotics possession near these sites, even though narcotics possession actually went up over the same period in Philadelphia.

In California, researchers surveyed 31 distinct urban sites and found that 90 percent of all incidents of vandalism or graffiti occurred in areas without urban gardens or other green spaces.

Yet another study, this time in the UK, at the University of Cardiff, showed in 2015 that parks and green spaces in urban areas can reduce crime by up to four percent.

Why Is Crime Reduced in Areas with Urban Gardens?

All of the evidence seems to point in one direction — the question is why the introduction of urban gardens works so well to reduce crime.

An exploration of this phenomenon, prepared by Kathleen Wolf, PhD in June 2010 at the University of Washington’s College of Environment, delved into the social, psychological, and environmental reasons why urban gardens and crime may be inversely related.

“Crime behavior is the result of a complex blend of social and environmental factors,” she writes. “Urban conditions such as crowding, high temperatures, and high levels of noise have all been linked to aggression and violence.” A reduction of these factors can, therefore, be attributed to the associated reduction of crime; introducing urban gardens fulfills these goals.

Michelle Kondo, one of the authors of the study on Youngstown and Philadelphia, explores a different angle of this idea: she writes that improved visibility afforded by urban gardens and other green spaces deters theft by removing hiding places for assailants or loot, and the improved aesthetics of the new spaces makes them seem less anonymous and therefore not as attractive for crime. In other words, the likelihood — or perceived likelihood — of getting caught increases with the addition of urban gardens.

“It could be that having some sort of facility that is owned and operated and maintained by the city, that could have [Philadelphia Water Department] vans coming by you never know when, that could signal that you might not want to hang around there,” Kondo told Citylab.

Psychologist Dr. Netta Weinstein explained yet another element of this idea, namely her belief that human exposure to nature brings about greater social cohesion, which deters crime.

“Individuals may be losing touch with nature as their contact with it decreases worldwide,” she told Western Daily Press. “The positive impact of local nature on neighbors’ mutual support may discourage crime, even in areas lower in socioeconomic factors.”

Wolf agrees that these gardens can create a better sense of community, therefore reducing crime.

“From a social perspective, trees and safety are directly linked through the dynamics of defensible space, territoriality, and social ties,” she writes. “Neighbors who have strong social ties form more effective social groups, and become more capable of building consensus on values and norms, monitoring behavior, intervening if problem behaviors occur, and defending their neighborhoods against an increase in crime.”

More American cities would do well to take a page from the books of these urban centers in adding even more urban gardens to their cityscapes.

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Urban garden image via Shutterstock

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Destruction in the Amazon. Clear-cutting of virgin forests. These are sad, infuriating events, but they can also seem distant – even abstract. How about the wanton destruction of a thriving Los Angeles community garden? Now that brought me to tears.

Who owns the land?

In 1992, after the Los Angeles riots, a 14-acre community garden was formed in an industrial section of South Central LA. Over 350 families banded together to create an urban paradise and grow their own food in the middle of a largely forgotten and blighted concrete jungle.

There was only one problem. Although they were clearly stewards of the land, they never legally owned it. Thus began a saga that played out for years and garnered the active support of the likes of Daryl Hannah. The families had been granted a revocable license to use the lot, but in 2004 the original owner decided to sell it and a few years later bulldozed the lush gardens (watch the heartbreaking video and you’ll be moved to tears) to build another warehouse in an already industrial part of town. The gardeners banded together as the South Central Farmers and protested to save their community gardens, but it wasn’t to be. The story is poignantly told in the Academy Award nominated documentary entitled The Garden.

Adding insult to injury, the proposed warehouse to be built on the now bulldozed and barren lot is a storage and distribution center for Forever 21. The South Central Farmers are working hard to stop that from happening too, and if possible, reclaim their beloved land to create paradise once again.

Listen to Joni Mitchell: Big Yellow Taxi

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If there’s one way to sum up the English, it’s in our approach to community gardening.

Across the Atlantic, gardeners club together and collectively transform large swathes of common land into something beautiful and useful. Agrarian democracy, you might say. Here, it’s feudalism – with the land carved into allotments and parceled out to individuals, for individuals. For a nominal fee to the local town council, an allotment is an Englishman/-woman’s private kingdom to tend and make productive. It’s an opportunity for good, satisfying hard work, a sense of community with one’s neighbors (who often became good friends), and the simple yet deep pleasure that comes from shouting “Gerroff my land!”

In recent years the allotment system has struggled. Growing demand has severely outstripped dwindling supply – from the million allotments available to the public at the end of the Second World War, only a quarter remained by 1997. In recent years the figure has risen – but so has the waiting list of people, currently around the 100,000 mark. In the ’70s it was green issues (championed by the iconic sitcom The Good Life) that made gardening hot again. Now it’s the economy. Free food? Where do I sign?

Our local and national government simply can’t keep up – but it’s just got an enormous boost from a most unlikely direction. The National Trust (a charitable organization looking after historic properties, and one of Britain’s biggest landowners) has just released land for the creation of 1,000 new allotments. That may not sound much compared with demand, but it’s thrown the plight of allotmenteers directly into the limelight – and those 1,000 plots could still create around $2.5 million’s worth of groceries for their lucky owners. There’s also the symbolism: one of Britain’s traditionally conservative organizations (in a literal sense), recognizing that food self-sufficiency is the way forward. Exciting stuff.

A new generation of gardeners and landowners are dragging on their wellies – and while the economy suffers, our green and pleasant land is going to work.

Image: lizjones112

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