Research Team
Project Overview
The objective of this project is to determine the effectiveness of a street cleaning intervention on gun violence. The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society (PHS) launched the LandCare Block Cleanup Program in July with the support of the Neubauer Family Foundation. The University of Pennsylvania’s Crime and Justice Policy Lab, Urban Health Lab, and the Department of Epidemiology at Columbia University have partnered with PHS to evaluate this intervention, with the goal of developing a policy-relevant scalable intervention that can be adopted by municipal government partners. The study is designed to investigate the following three broad research questions:
- Does cleaning litter, debris, and other trash from city streets impact rates of gun violence?
- Does the effect of street cleaning on gun violence vary by the frequency of cleanups?
- Does the effect of street cleaning on gun violence vary based on receiving enhanced greening and cleanup efforts?
The PHS LandCare Block Cleanup Program will last six months and occur biweekly, monthly, and include an enhanced cleanup effort for 150 blocks in Philadelphia based on random assignment, with the goal of developing a policy-relevant, scalable intervention that can be adopted by municipal government partners.
