Neighborhoods struggling with physical decline and high crime often become safer when local residents work together to fix up their neighborhood, Marc Zimmerman of the University of Michigan writes in CityLab. He and a group of colleagues say their search shows how small changes to urban environments—like planting flowers or adding benches—reduce violence. The result is an emerging crime prevention theory they call “Busy Streets.”
Busy Streets flips the logic of the Broken Windows theory—a controversial criminological approach to public safety—on its head. Broken Windows defenders see urban disorder in U.S. cities—graffiti, litter, actual broken windows, and the like—as a catalyst of antisocial behavior. So they direct police to crack down on minor offenses like vandalism, turnstile jumping, and public drinking. Proponents of the Busy Streets theory believe it’s better for neighborhoods to clean up and maintain their own city streets. Their research in Flint, Mich., has tracked a resurgence that followed improvements by a group of residents, businesses and two colleges along a 3-mile stretch of University Avenue running through the Carriagetown neighborhood of central Flint.