Effect of Remediating Blighted Vacant Land on Shootings: A Citywide Cluster Randomized Trial

Urban Farm DB summary

A citywide cluster-randomized trial assigning 541 Philadelphia vacant lots across 110 geographic clusters to a greening intervention, a minimal mow-and-clean intervention, or control. Shooting incidents fell significantly in the greening arm (-6.8%, 95% CI -10.6 to -2.7) and the clean-and-green arm (-9.2%, 95% CI -13.2 to -4.8), with no evidence of displacement to adjacent areas. Concludes that inexpensive, scalable vacant-land remediation significantly reduces shootings resulting in serious injury or death, and recommends cities pilot place-based interventions to reduce firearm violence.