Research Paper
Resident-led vacant lot greening and crime: Do ownership and visual condition-care matter?

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2021.104096Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Block-level analysis was used to examine the impact of Large Lot Program on crime.

  • Difference in differences analyses showed significant crime reduction over time.

  • Resident-owner-based vacant land-reuse initiatives improve neighborhood safety.

  • Visual quality of lots reduce crime as resident ownership across blocks expands.

  • The impacts of the program on crime vary depending on crime types.

Abstract

In many cities, high land vacancy has contributed to negative outcomes including visual blight, loss of sense of community and safety, and high crime rates. Although studies show that vacant lot greening programs reduce crime rates in high-vacancy areas, little is known about the impacts of resident-owner-based vacant lot repurposing initiatives on crime. We evaluated the impacts of one such initiative, the Chicago Large Lot Program, on crime reduction. Through this program, qualified property owners could purchase one or two nearby city-owned vacant lots for one dollar each. Focusing on two study sites on the South and West sides of Chicago, we performed difference-in-differences analyses to examine whether blocks with at least one purchased ‘large lot’ (n = 234) showed greater reductions in various types of crime compared to matched control blocks without large lots (n = 702) in the years following program implementation (2015–2018). We found that, starting in the second year of implementation, the program contributed to significant reductions in overall crime density as well as a few types of crime. We also found that visual condition and care of purchased lots was associated with reduced crime density in one of our study sites where the percentage of purchased lots and mean condition-care rating were more than twice as much as those of the other site. Our findings support the usefulness of vacant land repurposing programs that transfer ownership to residents, and suggest that greening activities encouraged by these programs help improve neighborhood safety and quality of life.

Introduction

About 17% of the land in US cities is considered vacant or abandoned (Newman, Bowman, Jung Lee, & Kim, 2016). Urban vacancy in the US is one of the consequences of substantial industrial decline, federally subsidized suburbanization, and inner-city disinvestment in medium and large cities starting from the mid-twentieth century (Dewar & Thomas, 2013). High vacancy rates in cities and neighborhoods create conditions that result in a host of related socio-economic problems for their residents (Accordino and Johnson, 2000, Han, 2014). Among these conditions, signs of physical disorder such as vandalism and untended vegetation that follow vacancy can reduce residents’ sense of safety and heighten stress in carrying out everyday activities, and at broader social levels can contribute to the loss of neighborhood social cohesion and sense of place (Nayak, 2003, Sampson et al., 2017, Sampson and Raudenbush, 1999). While these individual and community health and well-being outcomes are serious in and of themselves, signs of abandonment and neglect also encourage criminal activities that further reduce neighborhood resilience and quality of life (Chaix, 2009, Cohen et al., 2003).

In response to these problems, several U.S. cities have implemented vacant lot greening programs in high-vacancy areas (Schilling & Logan, 2008) such as the LandCare Program in Philadelphia, PA (Macdonald, Nguyen, Jensen, & Branas, 2021) and the Land Bank Clean & Green Program in Flint, MI (Sadler & Pruett, 2017). A growing research literature has examined the effectiveness of green space in reducing crime, and a recent systematic review (Shepley et al., 2019) identifies a number of key factors affecting this relationship, including green space program and policy interventions that help re-enfranchise communities, and mediating variables that influence health and well-being. (e.g., Auchincloss et al., 2019, Kondo et al., 2018). Building upon this body of evidence, a related literature has specifically examined how urban greening initiatives can help reduce problems associated with urban vacancy (Branas et al., 2018, Kondo et al., 2016). Findings show that community cohesion and sense of place are enhanced when signs of occupancy and care of repurposed vacant lots replace signs of neglect (Alaimo et al.,, 2010, Nassauer and Raskin, 2014). Further, occupancy and care in repurposed vacant land can have positive social effects extending beyond the boundaries of individual lots (Krusky et al., 2015), helping rebuild the community fabric of high-vacancy residential areas (Lawson, 2004).

As noted, various vacant lot greening and re-use strategies have been proposed and implemented to address the negative consequences of urban vacancy (Schilling & Logan, 2008). Of these, programs initiated by cities and nonprofit organizations have led to crime reductions (Garvin et al., 2013, Kondo et al., 2016, Schilling and Logan, 2008). However, little is known about whether programs that transfer ownership of vacant lots to residents, who then become the stewards of those lots, also contribute to decreasing crime. Furthermore, research has yet to examine the extent to which the quality of greened vacant lots (their level of condition and care) predicts changes in crime at a scale as small as a block.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate whether a resident-owner-based vacant lot re-use initiative, the Chicago Large Lot Program, has contributed to lower crime rates in high-vacancy neighborhoods of Chicago’s South and West sides. Specifically, we examined whether the transfer of ownership of vacant lots to neighborhood residents contributed to a long-term crime reduction in city blocks with these repurposed lots compared to blocks without such lots (Aim 1). We also studied whether improvements in the visual condition and care of greened ‘large lots’ (lots purchased under the Chicago Large Lot Program) were associated with reductions in reported crime incidents over time (Aim 2). Building upon place-based theories and crime-related analytical frameworks (Fowler & Mangione, 1982), and by virtue of selecting a fine spatial scale of analysis, our work links resident-owner-based vacant land reuse programs to crime rates in high-vacancy neighborhoods. In so doing, our study offers useful applications to policy and planning by showing the effectiveness of programs that engage resident-owners in marginalized communities in improving safety and neighborhood quality of life.

Section snippets

Place-based approaches to crime prevention

Until the late 1960s, most crime prevention strategies in the U.S. focused on offenders and their motivations, which to critics neither successfully explained crime nor informed policy (Kelling & Coles, 1996). Later in the 1960s, new research suggested that physical design of places, and people’s related behavioral responses, influenced crime levels (Fowler and Mangione, 1982, Jacobs, 1992). In the 1970s, the emphasis shifted from offenders and their motivations to potential victims and

Research questions

Building upon place-based theoretical frameworks and the literature on vacant land greening strategies, we examined the potential impacts of the Chicago Large Lot Program on crime reduction in the four years following its implementation. Specifically, we studied whether large lot ownership and resident-led investments in care resulting from program implementation have played a role in crime reduction in the subsequent years. The following aims and questions guided our analyses. Concerning

Large lot Program

The Large Lot Program is an outgrowth of a 2011 Green Healthy Neighborhoods planning effort enacted by the City of Chicago in collaboration with local community groups and organizations (City of Chicago, 2014a). As a revitalization and population stabilization strategy for high-vacancy neighborhoods on Chicago’s South and West sides, the program transfers city-owned vacant lots on residential blocks to neighborhood residents for the goals of creating wealth in the community and giving residents

To what extent does the ownership of large lots on residential blocks impact the density of highly frequent crime types over time? (Question 1.1).

As shown in Table 3, ownership of large lots on blocks had a significant impact on lowering crime density starting in Time 2 (year 2016). There was also a statistically significant main effect of large lot ownership (p < 0.001). Although the first interaction term did not show significance (Treatment * Time 1), all the three successive interaction terms had statistically significant coefficients (p < 0.05 for Treatment * Time 2 and p < 0.001 for Treatment * Times 3 and 4). Fig. 4a shows that

Discussion

We examined a resident-owner-based approach to repurposing vacant lots through the Chicago Large Lot Program and its effects on crime in high-vacancy neighborhoods. Improving safety has been part of the goals of this initiative (City of Chicago, 2014a), and we found evidence for the effectiveness of the program in terms of reducing crime density over time. This study showed that (1) ownership of large lots on blocks had a significant impact on lowering crime density starting one year after lot

Conclusion

Our findings suggest that a vacant land re-use policy that is based on resident-ownership and its consequent resident-owner-led care and utilization of the vacant lots has significant impact on crime reduction in high-vacancy neighborhoods. The resident-owner-based initiative examined in this study, shows that positive impact of such initiatives to neighborhood safety may not be visible immediately at the beginning, but their substantial impact will emerge and sustain over time. Our study

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Sara Hadavi: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Validation, Visualization, Writing - original draft. Alessandro Rigolon: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Methodology, Validation, Visualization, Writing - review & editing. Paul H. Gobster: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Writing - review & editing. William P. Stewart: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Project administration, Supervision, Writing

Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part through USDA Forest Service Northern Research Station Cooperative Research Agreement 15-JV-11242309-075 with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The authors thank Dr. Silvia Cordero-Sancho of the University of Michigan for sharing her insights on spatial analysis, Samuel Stewart for helping with refinement of GIS base map, and Dr. Dexter Locke for reviewing an earlier version of the manuscript. We also thank three anonymous reviewers for positive

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