Alexis Dinno

Alexis Dinno

Alexis Dinno
The principle aims of the Community Health and Urban Residential Lot Study (CHAURLS) are to test the hypothesized effects of community-based urban residential restoration projects in New Haven, Connecticut upon both social use of abandoned lots in the residential landscape and psychosocial measures of health and well being during the summer of 2000.

2000 Urban Fellow

Research Topic: Environment and Public Health

Faculty Advisor: Nora Groce

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.