Cleaning up Vacant Lots Can Curb Urban Crime

EXPERTS ADDRESS PUBLIC PARKS, CRIME, AND HOMELESSNESS 1 PAGE 16 Stephen Eide of the Manhattan Institute examines policy responses to homelessness. PAGE 29 John MacDonald of the University of Pennsylvania tackles blight and crime in cities. (writing together with co-Author Charles Branas of Columbia University) The Urban Policy Series hosts experts and stakeholders for discussions around the country on topics contained in this book. The results of these conversations inform the writings of our contributors and provide direct support to specific communities. Foreword Stephen Eide of the Manhattan Institute examines policy responses to homelessness. The fate of cities depends on the quality of their public spaces. And those public spaces, in turn, depend on how well they serve the people of a city. Parks, streets, and sidewalks are not merely to be well kempt physical places, but should strengthen and shape the PAGE interactions that form our vital social infrastructure. 5 We once knew this: William H. Whyte argued in 1979 that the point of John MacDonald of the New York City’s Bryant Park should be to “promote the widest possible University of Pennsylvania use and enjoyment by people.” Frederick Law Olmsted before him, as tackles blight and the designer of Central Park, argued that streets were an “outer park.” crime in cities. (writing together with co-Author Charles Branas of Columbia University) Yet many cities today struggle to maintain their parks and streets and sidewalks. Public spaces are deteriorating for want of care, sensible management, and diverse funding. Vacant lots are breeding disorder and crime in distressed cities. Homelessness is harming the health and safety of sheltered and unsheltered people alike. In our latest Urban Policy Series, Manhattan Institute invited authors to speak to the state of America’s public spaces, equipping urban leaders with the ideas and tools they need to lead. As they considered these issues, they sat down with local experts from across the country—including cities in California, Missouri, and Wisconsin— to learn how to implement them practically. 3 John4 MacDonald visiting St. Louis to discuss his findings Crime John M. MacDonald and Charles C. Branas draw on their years-long study of the Philadelphia LandCare program to show how cleaning and greening vacant lots can dramatically deter crime. Since crime is highly concentrated in neighborhoods, small, targeted investments in remediating blighted properties can have large-scale benefits across an entire city. 5 6Howard Husock, John MacDonald, and Michael Hendrix in North St. Louis. CLEANING UP VACANT LOTS CAN CURB URBAN CRIME John M. MacDonald John M. MacDonald is professor of Crime Prevention Through crime in the city.5 Given this reality, it criminology and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. His work has Environmental Design makes sense to think about what changes been published in journals across a variety Scholars who study urban problems we can make to curb these pockets of of disciplines, including the Proceedings crime that exist in every major city. of the National Academy of Sciences, are well aware of the powerful role American Journal of Epidemiology, that “place” has in shaping crime; they The concentration of poverty, Criminology, and Journal of the American understand that the two are tightly dilapidated homes, and vacant and Statistical Association. MacDonald holds coupled.1 In the 19th century, André- abandoned spaces is endemic in urban an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University 6 of Maryland and a B.A. from Vassar. Michel Guerry and Adolphe Quetelet pockets of crime. Targeted community found that crime in France was economic development would seem Charles C. Branas concentrated in the same places, and to be a natural solution. But there are remained remarkably stable in those few examples of policies that cities Charles C. Branas is professor of epidemiology and chairman of the same areas, year after year. A century can enact in the short term to reduce Department of Epidemiology at Columbia later, University of Chicago sociologists poverty and decades of neglect in certain University’s Mailman School of Public Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay noted neighborhoods or communities, while Health. His research has been published in that the crime was highly concentrated at the same time protecting against journals including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, American by place in Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, sudden out-migration by long-term and Journal of Epidemiology, British Medical Cleveland, Philadelphia, and Richmond, multigenerational residents. In fact, Journal, New England Journal of Medicine, Virginia.2 Even today, we continue to see the history of place-based economic and American Journal of Public Health. He is the coauthor, with John M. a small number of particular locations in development is not entirely encouraging. MacDonald and Robert J. Stokes, of every major city generate the majority of Harvard economist Edward Glaeser Changing Places: The Science and Art of serious crime.3 notes that state and federally funded New Urban Planning (2019). Branas holds urban economic development initiatives a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University’s Hebrew University criminologist Bloomberg School of Public Health, an David Weisburd has referred to this that target places have generally failed to 7 M.S. from Drexel University, and a B.A. empirical reality as the “law of crime generate benefits that exceed their costs. from Franklin and Marshall College. concentration.”4 In Philadelphia, for By contrast, cities can abate vacant example, 5% of addresses where a crime lots and abandoned spaces and address was reported from January 2006 to proximal causes for why crime centers in December 2017 accounted for 50% of all specific places. Focusing on abatement 7 CLEANING UP VACANT LOTS CAN CURB URBAN CRIME also avoids the “causal fallacy” problem8 makes it easier to surprise a potential Philadelphia LandCare of thinking that the only way to reduce victim. Wilson and Kelling’s “broken (PLC): A Case Study crime is by addressing “root causes” like windows” theory also explains that signs Today’s cities can curb the incidence poverty. Evidence from social science of blight and disorder signal that an area of crime by abating blighted vacant 14 suggests that patterns of crime change in is “fair game … for fun and plunder.” land. The benefits are clear, and a step with the human-built environment, Visible signs of disorder signal that no one useful strategy is to give priority to where higher crime areas devolve from cares and that community norms around programs that are simple to implement, single-family and multi-unit dwellings civility are no longer obligatory. Physical are scalable to large populations, and 9 into places of blight and abandonment. signs of disorder like trash on the streets are not expensive to sustain.16 While This spiral of decay is often just that: and abandoned and unkempt properties addressing blighted vacant land has a process that feeds upon itself—from spread fear, lead to more abandonment, been advocated as a crime-prevention crime to abandonment to more crime, and signal to criminals that crime goes policy for decades, there are now and so on. When people abandon a home unabated. Decisions about how and examples of successful programs that or business, trash accumulates, graffiti where cities invest resources in the cities can inexpensively replicate to multiplies, properties turn to ruin, and abatement of vacant lots could have a reduce crime and encourage residents crime and disorder fester, triggering a greater influence on reducing crime than to remain in their neighborhoods for cycle in which more people abandon many realize. decades to come. their homes and businesses. John Snow’s work on the causes of Philadelphia is one such example. Crime prevention through cholera in contaminated drinking water Vacant and abandoned urban spaces environmental design and situational in the United Kingdom in the 19th century are an effect of the 1960s and 1970s shift crime-prevention theories explain why provides a historical example of how from an industrial to a service-based vacant and abandoned spaces invite changes to a place can be transformative. economy, the movement of people to 10 crime. Poor visibility on streets attracts Snow mapped cholera deaths in the the suburbs, rising crime, urban riots, 11 criminal offenders. Overgrown shrubs, Soho section of Westminster and showed and “block-busting,” all of which led to weeds, and trees on abandoned properties that they clustered around the Broad the spiral of urban decay.17 Cities such and vacant lots reduce the visibility of Street water pump. After he petitioned as Boston, New York, San Francisco, and 12 criminal activities on the streets and local politicians to remove the handle of Seattle have been able to successfully discourage residents from walking down the water pump, cholera deaths waned. rebound from the deindustrialization 13 them. Motivated offenders notice that The simple act of removing a source of of the U.S. economy by attracting they can avoid detection from bystanders the epidemic vastly improved the health technology and finance industries. But and apprehension by the police when of an entire community and prevented Philadelphia, like Baltimore, Cleveland, there are easy places to hide, and hiding cholera from reemerging in Soho.15 8 12,000 18M 28% VACANT LOTS SQUARE FEET OF ALL TRANSFORMED VACANT LOTS and St. Louis, has a legacy of blight and along with $150 per year to stabilize the lot Remove trash and abandonment that had come to full through biweekly cleaning and mowing.18 debris from vacant lots scale by the 1990s. Since its inception in 1996, the In the later years of that decade, Kensington neighborhood’s PLC program residents of the Kensington neighborhood has expanded through partnerships with in Philadelphia grew tired of the eyesore local contractors and city agencies to of vacant lots, the drug dealing, and other the entire city, transforming more than vices taking place in these areas around 12,000 vacant lots and over 18 million their homes.

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