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Comment by andsoitis | Hacker News Reader

If your city cannot afford botanical gardens, then planting trees on sidewalks, more boulevards, and other places not only bestow ecological benefits but is also good for the human psyche and reduces crime.

https://www.fs.usda.gov/research/treesearch/40701

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Does planting trees reduce crime?

Or are areas that have planted trees areas that also tend to have reduced crime?

The abstract of that paper indicates an inverse correlation between trees and crime, but stops well short of claiming or proving a causal relationship.

> Or are areas that have planted trees areas that also tend to have reduced crime?

Perhaps fake it till you make it?

Worth a try surely.

The correlation they saw was after controlling for potentially confounding variables, like income level, housing stock, density, and demographics, as explained in this article: https://caseytrees.org/2023/09/mythbusting-trees-and-crime/.

So of course it's not proof of causation, but reverse causation(nice neighborhoods lead to more trees planted) seems unlikely to explain the effect.

Indeed. Islington in London was famous for having few trees and lots of crime. Now it’s a nice fancy area that still doesn’t have a lot of trees.

There is about white collar crime lurking here somewhere.

The crime is understood to be street crime. The bankers and lawyers would have to decide to insider-trade on the pavement outside the pub, for this crime to become street crime. Or, kick people because street crime is often crime of violence.

So, get that suit on, start dealing ahead of the market, and kick a beggar. THEN you can contribute to the statistics.

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