14 DAY TRIAL // Several specialists writing in the journal Landscape and Urban Planning maintain that urban vegetation does more than just freshen up the air and accommodate various animals that can live close to humans. Thus, they say that violent crimes are less likely to occur in greener neighborhoods.
These claims can be argued to go against what most people know about assaults, robberies and burglaries.
More precisely, it is a common held belief that those who are about to commit a violent crime rely on vegetation in order to keep themselves concealed and strike when the opportunity presents itself.
However, this new study hypothesizes that greener neighborhoods go hand in hand with greater community involvement, simply because people spend more time outdoors and get to bound with one another, Mongabay reports.
By the looks of it, this makes it more difficult for criminals to target specific individuals.
As well as this, the researchers speculate that urban vegetation helps alleviate psychological stress. This in turn is believed to make it less likely for certain individuals to act out and go about assaulting other people.
“[Our] results indicate that vegetation abundance is significantly associated with lower rates of assault, robbery, and burglary, but not theft,” the researchers reportedly wrote in their study.
“This research has implications for urban planning policy, especially as cities are moving towards 'green' growth plans and must look to incorporate sustainable methods of crime prevention into city planning,” they went on to argue.
The findings of this research are based on data collected why looking at the frequency of violent crimes in Philadelphia's greener areas, the same source informs us.
Aspects such as education, poverty and population levels were all taken into consideration by the specialists when linking neighborhood rich in vegetation to fewer reported cases of violent crimes.
Because the study only focused on neighborhoods in Philadelphia, some might argue that further investigations on the matter at hand are needed in order for more reliable conclusions to be drawn.