Can a greener Philly reduce crime?

In a bid to improve public safety, quality of life initiatives are bringing brighter lights and more green spaces to Philadelphia.

This story was published by The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering gun violence in America. Sign up for its newsletters here.

The two trash-strewn lots on the 1400 block of South Paxon Street were among the things Dianna Coleman and Verna Williams bonded over. They often mused about how nice it would be to transform the area into an inviting place for their Southwest Philadelphia community.

Williams, Coleman said, raised her family on that block. She often lamented that the neighborhood’s violence and blight deprived its children of experiences like the ones Williams had known growing up on a farm in the South. Shortly after Williams, 97, died in 2022, Coleman got to work. With the city’s blessing, and help from environmental organizations, the lots became “Ms. Verna’s Garden.” It’s where Coleman, 47, and Paxon Street children tend to plants, fruit trees, and crops, including okra, eggplants, collard greens, squash, tomatoes, and melons.

“When I first moved here, there were so many shootings. So many young people were losing their lives,” said Coleman, a block captain. She also uses the garden for movie nights, readings, and drumming sessions. “Since then, the block has calmed down tremendously.” The garden, she said, led to a cultural shift, bringing “a level of community that may not have existed, and a sense of pride.”

The City of Philadelphia has adopted a similar approach. Since taking office last January, Mayor Cherelle Parker, who campaigned on making Philadelphia “the safest, cleanest, and greenest big city in the nation,” has made environmental initiatives a key component of her administration, saying they can improve quality of life issues, including gun violence.

The strategy dovetails with an emerging body of research supporting that belief, as studies increasingly link gun violence and climate change. Higher daily temperatures have been associated with higher levels of shootings, and planting trees is one way to temper the heat.

“When you have people coming together to clean and green a community, it brings positivity. So, they’re not only addressing clean and green issues, they’re addressing issues like crime, litter prevention, education,” said Carlton Williams, the city’s first director of the Office of Clean and Green Initiatives. “The neighborhood is not dissolute, it’s not abandoned. Crime seems to thrive in places that are dissolute and abandoned.”

Parker said the city has made progress toward banishing one of its unwanted monikers, “Filthadelphia.” To that end, she said in March that the city had cleaned more than 67,000 streets and corridors, towed more than 11,600 abandoned vehicles, and spruced up more than 17,300 vacant lots. Still, it’s a work in progress. According to Philly Stat 360, a Philly website that tracks city services and operations, of five “greener” initiatives, none has reached its target for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30. The city’s goal is to construct 225 green acres or more, but it has only constructed 55; there’s also a goal to plant 3,000 or more trees, but less than 1,600 have been planted so far.

The plan to clean Philadelphia

Parker kicked off the city’s environmental efforts by creating the Office of Clean and Green Initiatives and a Clean and Green Cabinet. The clean and green office is charged with removing litter, graffiti, and abandoned cars; stopping illegal dumping; cleaning up vacant lots; and sealing abandoned properties. The office works with other city departments, nonprofit organizations, and community groups on efforts like planting 15,000 trees during Parker’s term.

By May, the city was meeting its target for on-time trash collection, on-time recycling collection, and timely removal of graffiti. But the average time the city has needed to remove abandoned vehicles, 134 days, exceeds the goal of 120 days, and the average time it’s been taking to clean up illegally dumped garbage, 10.3 days, is double the goal of five days.Despite only being halfway toward the goal of planting 3,000 trees by June 30, a city spokesperson said officials are not concerned, because the city receives more service requests in spring and summer.

Aiding the cleanup efforts is a new law that allows the city to fine trash dumpers up to $5,000 per item, per incident, netting $3.5 million last year, up from $45,000 in 2023. There are also more cameras at dumping hot spots.

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner recently launched the DAO Cleaner and Greener Enforcement Unit to prosecute those caught discarding trash and other debris illegally. Perpetrators could face charges ranging from summary offenses to felonies.

A spotty solution?

The city is investing in its clean and green agenda at a moment when Philadelphia, like many cities, is experiencing steady declines in shootings after gun violence spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic. Philadelphia has had 21[3]  percent fewer homicides so far this year compared to this time in 2024, according to the Philadelphia Police Department; homicides dipped by 36 percent last year.

Coleman is optimistic that the city’s environmental efforts will help shootings continue to decline. “Environmental conditions directly impact a person’s mental health and overall well being,” she said.

To help more people green their communities, she added, the city should make it easier to take control of vacant lots. “If people are willing to restore these lands, don’t make it difficult,” she said. “Allow us to do it, because at the end of the day, it’s going to benefit the community.”

But Ahmad Almakky, program manager for the Clean Water Action, a nonprofit that works with South and Southwest Philadelphia residents on environmental justice projects, is skeptical. After lots are beautified, he said, “troublemakers” leave one area only to cause problems on different blocks.

“When you green a space and set up lights and benches, that space becomes more closely observed so troublemakers move away,” he said. “That does not deal with the systemic problem of violence. It deals with the symptoms and it makes one block safer.”

The connection between environmentalism and public safety

While the effectiveness of the city’s beautification efforts is just now being measured, Williams, who heads the clean and green office, points to research that specifically connects cleaner environments to a decline in gun violence and other crimes.

He noted a 2018 study co-authored by University of Pennsylvania researchers that showed that greening interventions significantly reduced violent crime in Philadelphia by as much as 30 percent, reduced people’s fear of going outside because of safety concerns by 58 percent, and increased people’s use of outside space by 76 percent.

In 2020, researchers at the University of Virginia found that while neglected green space can promote crime, well-maintained green spaces can reduce it. In Flint, Michigan, researchers found that initiatives that let communities spruce up vacant lots were associated with a nearly 40 percent reduction in assaults and violent crime. A 2021 Michigan State University study found that over 30 years, the greener a city was, the fewer homicides were recorded. Research has also connected the way young people feel about neighborhood disorder with their propensity to own a gun.

In Philadelphia, there’s evidence that other similar efforts have already had a positive effect. In August 2023, the Philadelphia Energy Authority started replacing 100,000 streetlight fixtures with brighter, crisper lights, said president and CEO Emily Schapira. According to a new study from Penn’s Crime and Justice Policy Lab, the project yielded a 21 percent reduction in nighttime outdoor gun crime in the areas where new lights were installed.

Shady issue

A key component of the city’s green agenda is planting trees. “They reduce the deadly effects of heat, remove pollution from the air, and more,” the 2023 Philly Tree Plan states. The city lost 6 percent of its tree canopy in the past decade, the equivalent of about 1,000 football fields. The plan set a goal to grow canopy coverage from 20 percent to 30 percent by 2035.

In priority areas — places with the least tree canopy and highest heat indexes — the plan estimates that reaching the goal will cost $98 million. Those communities include parts of West Philadelphia, North Philly, and Kensington, among other areas that typically face higher levels of gun violence.

Maurice Sampson II, the Eastern Pennsylvania director for Clean Water Action, said not everyone wants trees, because they remember when the city planted the wrong type of trees and they grew so large that their roots cracked sidewalks.

“People … have to be convinced that trees are good for them, and that’s a struggle that is going on across the city, especially in the low-income neighborhoods where they’ve had no trees for decades,” he said. “It’s really an obstacle.”

West Philadelphian Elaine Wells, the founder of a small nonprofit called Global Thinking Initiatives, Inc., has been giving out starter trees to her mostly Black neighbors since 2022.

She’s also keeping an eye on the city. “I’m liking what I’m seeing,” she said. “You hope that the endgame of this is not to attract more gentrification, but to be genuinely concerned about the quality of life for Black people.”

Cover photo: Elaine Wells during a tree giveaway, courtesy of Elaine Wells.