Community Gardens and Neighborhood Safety: Enhancing Urban Spaces, Improving Health, and Reducing Crime Through Urban Agriculture

Abstract

Background: Research has found that community garden participants consume more fruits and vegetables than nonparticipants and that gardens add beauty to neighborhoods and help participants generate social capital. Urban greenspaces have been associated with a variety of physical and psychosocial health benefits, from self-reported health to cardiovascular health. Research has repeatedly found that urban greenspace is associated with reductions in crime and increased perception of community safety, but few studies have assessed impacts of community gardens on crime rates. Objective: This project evaluated whether and how community gardens affect crime rates. Then, a theoretically grounded framework for communicating such findings to maximize impact and uptake among policymakers and practitioners is proposed. Methods: Aim I: To address questions raised by community representatives, I obtained crime data from the Tucson Police Department (TPD) for the years of 2009-2013. GIS data was later supplemented with primary data on garden cultivation status, collected from garden visits conducted in 2015. Eleven gardens observed to be under cultivation in 2015 were included in the analysis. This data was analyzed using differences-in-differences estimation to determine relative change in crime levels for neighborhoods into which gardens were introduced and adjacent areas. Aim II: To inform dissemination of findings for maximum impact on policy and practice, a theoretically grounded framework for dissemination is proposed. Aim III: The proposed framework for communicating research findings is pilot tested and to impact emerging practitioners’ approaches. Results: Aim I: Differences-in-differences estimation that that the installation of community gardens was associated with decreases in Total Crime, Motor Vehicle Theft, Assaults, Robbery, Sexual Assault, and Suspicious Activity. The installation of the gardens was associated with increases in Larceny, Narcotics, and Disorderly Conduct. Aim II: A policy brief and a lay journal article were then created in alignment with the framework to outreach to policy makers and practitioners of urban agriculture, respectively. Aim III: Two case studies are presented demonstrating how emerging practitioners applied these research findings to practice generating policy change relative to urban land use for community safety and vacant lot conversion, respectively. Conclusion: The introduction of community gardens was associated with decreases in violent crime rates, which is consistent with associations seen when other types of greenspace have been introduced into urban environments. These findings are important because they demonstrate the multi-pronged benefits of community gardens, yielding healthful foods, social capital and physical activity increases for gardeners, neighborhood beautification, and decreases in crime rates as well. These findings can be utilized to encourage policies that promote the practice of community gardening, or urban agriculture. Given disparities in access to greenspace, quality food environments, and exposure to crime, urban agriculture presents a promising approach to creating cross-cutting interventions to counteract health disparities.