A recent article in Organic Gardening caught my eye and got me thinking. "Where Hope Grows," by Scott Meyer discusses the role of community gardens in neighborhood renewal projects and the increased emphasis on establishing community gardens by various administrative agencies. On the topic of neighborhood renewal, Meyer references this research:Studies at the University of Washington and elsewhere have documented that neighborhoods with cared-for green spaces have lower crime rates and the people nearby suffer less domestic strife and endure less stress. In cities from New York to Detroit, Chicago to Atlanta, we've seen how community gardens turn abandoned lots that attract trash and trouble--into peaceful oases where anyone can relax in the fresh air and sunshine, and get a respite from urban life.
I've heard about these studies before and am curious about the correlation between lower crime rates and community gardens. But it's strange to me that everyone seems to conclude from this research that community gardens cause lower crime rates and less domestic strife. I guess it could be true. Gardening is a great stress reliever, creative outlet, escape from other problems in your life, and source of pride and a sense of ownership. But it seems just as likely that whatever factors are in place to make a community garden possible in that neighborhood are also causing changes in crime and domestic strife rates.
Starting and maintaining a community garden takes a lot of work and organizing. If you had never done something like that before, you would learn a lot about working with (or getting around) city officials, recruiting help and support from neighbors, being inclusive and considerate, etc. And some of these skills turn out to be exactly the kind of skills you would need to organize your neighbors to bring about other changes in your community. It would also get you talking to each other, and bring people out of their houses and into a common space. I suspect that having a few motivated individuals in your neighborhood who take the initiative start a project like this is probably the real cause of the other changes observed.
And it seems like it would snowball. Getting the garden going would require cooperation and organization on the part of some, and the beginnings of the project would attract more attention,
and get more people involved and talking to each other, and the improvement in the space would become a source of pride and bestow a sense of accomplishment, which would draw in more people and produce more motivation, etc. And having a sense of place and an increased degree of control over your environment is empowerfulizing. And working in the garden is kind of therapeutic. So it seems to me that the more fruitful direction to take this is to examine the conditions that make it possible for communities to establish a community garden, and to try to generate those conditions and nurture the fledgling movements that emerge.
and get more people involved and talking to each other, and the improvement in the space would become a source of pride and bestow a sense of accomplishment, which would draw in more people and produce more motivation, etc. And having a sense of place and an increased degree of control over your environment is empowerfulizing. And working in the garden is kind of therapeutic. So it seems to me that the more fruitful direction to take this is to examine the conditions that make it possible for communities to establish a community garden, and to try to generate those conditions and nurture the fledgling movements that emerge.
Rachel,
ReplyDeleteHave you ever heard of broken windows theory of crime causation?
Community Gardens would basically be an immunization to broken window crimogenic factors.
www.wikipedia.org/wiki/broken_windows_theory
Steven,
ReplyDeleteYes I have, and I wonder the same thing about that. It seems like whatever factors encourage neighborhood cleanup efforts would also be conducive to lowering crime rates and encouraging a sense of community and ownership and coherence. So once the process is set in motion it becomes a chicken and egg kind of thing, but I suspect that the initial cause of the changes is some third (and fourth) variable.
It makes sense to me that this correlation would exist (and I think it's related to the "broken window" phenomenon), but I agree that it's hard to put your finger on the cause. I can see how it would snowball, as you note, because gardening is one of those things that produces a sense of pride and results of your work that you can see pretty quickly. Maybe it would be more informative to look at neighborhoods that have tried but failed to establish a community garden, and see what's different between these and the ones that have succeeded.
ReplyDeleteWhichever way the causal link goes, if the research causes people to fix windows and establish community gardens, then I'm happy about it.
ReplyDeleteCrime is caused by poverty.
ReplyDeletePeople without money will do whatever they have to do to survive - some of the more aggressive poor people turn to stealing, burglary or armed robbery.
Others take jobs in illegal businesses - drug dealing, gun running, illegal gambling.
Still others, angered and alienated by their economic deprivation, take their anger out on others - rape, domestic violence, assault and battery.
So called "community gardens" DO NOT solve ANY of those problems.
Poor people need JOBS and INCOME - so called "community gardens" provide neither!
Beyond that, I've always had a problem with so called "community gardens" - in my experience, living in a New York City ghetto and having worked in the not for profit world, most "community gardens" that I'm familiar with are run by a small crew who treat the garden as their de facto private property.
The dominant experience of a "community garden" for somebody who's not part of the crew is to be standing on the outside of padlocked and chained shut wire fence, looking in to a privatized public space.
The land wasted for so called "community gardens" would be far better used for public parks (open to ALL not just the inner circle), day care centers, schools, clinics or public housing - and, as it happens all of those purposes generate JOBS which bring much needed money into the community.
As for the alleged "drop in crime" supposedly caused by "community gardens" - Mark Twain once said that there are "lies, damned lies and statistics" and, knowing the not for profit world as I do, I could imagine that somebody put those statistics out there to get criminal justice funding for the not for profits that run these "community gardens".
In other words I don't buy it.
Gangbox, yes, I sort of doubt that there's a causal relationship between community gardens and crime rates too, as I said in this post. But I do think that the correlation is significant and interesting, and if we could identify the other things that are going on in these communities that are maybe causing both of these changes, that would be a useful piece of information.
ReplyDeleteI've had a very different experience with community gardens in inner-city Seattle, but I can imagine that there's a lot of variation in the experience and it's role in a community depending on who's running it and what their goals are and how much control of the project they have.
@gangbox
ReplyDeletei'm curious if you actually read rachel's post or if you're just responding to the organic gardening article? it didn't seem to me like rachel was arguing that community gardens cause a change in crime rates or that crime is not caused by poverty, etc. in fact, i think she was arguing the opposite:
it's strange to me that everyone seems to conclude from this research that community gardens cause lower crime rates and less domestic strife. I guess it could be true...
But it seems just as likely that whatever factors are in place to make a community garden possible in that neighborhood are also causing changes in crime and domestic strife rates.
...I suspect that having a few motivated individuals in your neighborhood who take the initiative start a project like this is probably the real cause of the other changes observed.