Alexis Dinno
Community Health and Urban Residential Lot Study
We tested the effect of Urban Resources Initiative summer greenspace projects on both environmental expression of social norms of land use in residential abandoned lots and on the emotionality, violence perceptions and safety-related behavior of New Haven residents in August of 2000. URI greenspace projects were found to increase the vibrancy of social use of abandoned parcels in New Haven. At the same time, URI greenspace projects were found significantly associated with increased positive emotionality, decreased negative emotionality and increased perceptions of violence against others in the neighborhood. No significant association was found between safety-related hesitation or reported violence outside and URI greenspace projects. This study provides an assessment of the reliability and validity of the Environmental Expression on Abandoned Lots Scale.