The prospect of boosting his landscaping business’s bottom line was Erik Cooper’s initial reason for contracting to spruce up blighted, vacant lots in his hometown. But a decade spent participating in the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s Philadelphia LandCare program has delivered benefits beyond mere dollar signs.
“We’re replacing dumping grounds and lots covered in trash and overgrown with 
Equally gratifying is how LandCare’s Roots to Re-entry project lets Cooper employ and train formerly incarcerated people.
“We’re hiring people from the communities we serve,” said Cooper. “Some of them have moved on, done very well, gone back to school. I’ve become very passionate about all of this.”
Twenty-year-old LandCare’s added impact is its role in preventing crime. After vacant lots were turned into “pocket parks” with playground equipment, barbecue grills, et cetera, reported crimes involving guns fell by 29% in Philadelphia’s poorest neighborhoods, according to public health and crime researchers at Columbia University and University of Pennsylvania. Vandalism and other nuisance crimes also fell by 28%, according to that study, which spanned a decade and ended in 2008.
“Scholars who study urban problems are well aware of the powerful role that ‘place’ has in shaping crime; they understand that the two are tightly coupled,” researchers John McDonald and Charles Branas wrote in the Manhattan Institute’s September 2019 edition of Urban Policy.
In addition to a decline in violent crime, the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal, also recorded an uptick in residents’ willingness to spend time outdoors. (Driven, at least partly, by those results, similar projects are underway or being launched in cities including Chicago; Flint, Michigan; Youngstown, Ohio; and New Orleans.)
