Community Gardens to Fight Urban Youth Crime and Stabilize Neighborhoods

IntroductionChronic urban health challenges, particularly among the young, result from a prolonged exposure to a multitude of environmental health disparities. Challenges include living in Environment Justice Neighborhoods with poor soil and air quality and an acute scarcity of fresh food and vegetables. These challenges are exacerbated by poverty, high unemployment, single parent homes, neighborhood instability, civic disengagement, crime, and youth violence. The accumulation of these challenges results in poor nutrition, obesity, diabetes, psychological disorders, deficient growth of infants; unwanted or inadvertent pregnancies, suicide, substance abuse and exposure to prolonged trauma. However, often the devastation caused by youth violence is categorized as a tangential separate criminal justice issue with inadequate recognition that it is the result of prolonged environmental heath disparity. Violence is a serious health issue and prevention needs to be included in breaking the cycle of environmental health disparities (1-3).Most inner city areas have abandoned properties and unused vacant lots. These unmaintained lots are often Brownfield hazards, overgrown with unwanted vegetation, trash and vermin, making the lots attractive places to hide guns, conduct illegal activities and engage in violent crime. The existence of these lots perpetuates health disparities. The recapture of these lots can become a vital tool to reduce health disparities while assisting community organizing, neighborhood stabilization and long term strategic land use planning. By reclaiming these lots and converting them to gardens or pocket parks, a city not only addresses the obvious health conditions but also eliminates blight in the neighborhood. This in turn creates a positive neighborhood resource that can stabilize a neighborhood and bring neighbors together in a shared activity and purpose. Thus, an obvious liability is efficiently and effectively converted to a cost effective multi-purpose urban asset (4-8).Inner city residents include immigrants who have traveled from areas of the world where community gardens are an economic and social staple within their communities. In the US, this often results in an increased demand for community gardens that can be met by residents building informal community gardens on existing vacant lots. Oftentimes, these informal gardens are built without authority and often without proper testing with regard to soil suitability and safety or environmental appropriateness. Many vacant lots are contaminated by traditional urban fill including wood and coal ash and residual solid contaminants such as lead and arsenic. Without appropriate environmental testing and site preparation, these contaminants create immediate and direct health hazards for the neighborhoods, creating a food consumption pathway risk. This risk is particularly acute because of the area's large numbers of children who are highly susceptible to lead and other soil contaminants often found in abandoned lots (9, 10).The importance of community gardens, particularly in low-income neighborhoods, has been recognized by numerous studies as vehicles for neighborhood stabilization, economic development and contribution to the betterment of neighborhood health and recreational activities particularly for the young and elderly. The utilization of vacant lots for community gardens provides small oases of productive green space and a source of shared recreation in a gritty area otherwise lacking opportunities for healthy social interaction and recreation (10-12).Community gardens generate direct economic benefits in at least two ways: they increase property values significantly within a 1,000-foot radius by attracting new residents and small businesses and help to stabilize neighborhoods. This translates into thousands of dollars in cumulative property tax revenue increases annually. Gardens help stabilize neighborhoods as a result of stewardship of the gardens by neighborhood groups and residents at little or no cost to the city. …