The initial results, as recently reported in The Philadelphia Inquirer, of Mayor Cherelle Parker’s plan to clean every block in Philadelphia were as expected: While the labor-intensive effort spruced things up in the short term, many blocks across the city quickly returned to how they were before the cleanup — dishearteningly dirty. As one resident bluntly put it, the improvements only lasted “for a couple days.”
This result was unsurprising even to people in the administration. As Carlton Williams, Philadelphia’s director of the newly-created Office of Clean and Green Initiatives, explained, the Parker administration “knew that one single cleanup wasn’t going to address years and years of blight and neglect.”
While Mayor Parker’s commitment to cleaning the entire city twice a year is commendable, it will likely prove challenging, expensive and ultimately unsustainable. Rather, she should leverage the City’s wealth of public data to strategically prioritize the areas most in need of support.
Research shows that greening and cleaning these parcels is one of the most impactful, cost-effective ways to improve quality of life in a neighborhood.
Philadelphia’s quality of life issues are primarily concentrated in a handful of neighborhoods. For example, just 11.9 percent of Census blocks see all of Philly’s gun assaults. A mere 6.6 percent of blocks suffer nearly half the illegal dumping, while 27.7 percent of blocks account for all of the vacant buildings in Philadelphia. These challenges stem from decades of systemic disinvestment in marginalized neighborhoods, and disproportionately affect Black, Brown and low-income communities.
Improving quality of life in Philadelphia depends on improving quality of life in these neighborhoods — it means correcting historic disinvestment with targeted investment. The organization that we run, Clean & Green Philly, is laying the groundwork for how Philadelphia can do this.
We have developed cleanandgreenphilly.org, a free online tool that combines public data to help users strategically target the vacant properties in Philadelphia that could have the most impact on improving quality of life. We use the City’s own data on vacancy, gun crime, Licenses & Inspections violations, and land stewardship to highlight which properties are most in need of attention.
In particular, we believe that targeting vacant properties and their immediate vicinity is key. Research shows that greening and cleaning these parcels is one of the most impactful, cost-effective ways to improve quality of life in a neighborhood. This approach is associated with reducing the urban heat island effect, lowering residents’ stress levels, contributing to lower levels of depression among residents — and as much as a 29 percent drop in gun violence in the surrounding neighborhood.
Out of more than half a million properties across the city, we have identified roughly 7,500 high priority parcels: vacant lots and buildings with the highest rates of gun violence and illegal dumping, and especially those not already in existing land care programs. These parcels represent roughly 1.5 percent of all the properties in Philadelphia and are particularly concentrated in parts of North and West Philadelphia like Cobbs Creek, Strawberry Mansion and Kensington.
Our approach at Clean & Green Philly is to encourage community groups, nonprofits, and City agencies to put their efforts toward returning these properties to productive use, such as through neighborhood cleanups, planting community gardens, installing pop-up parks or even building affordable housing. By deliberately investing in and uplifting these places, we both maximize our impact and help to right historic wrongs.
Wanted: A more strategic approach to cleaning and greening
Currently, the Parker administration’s approach to cleaning and greening is too broad to be sustained at the level necessary to have a meaningful impact. And while we appreciate the Mayor’s goal of cleaning all of Philadelphia, this approach does not appear to be substantively informed by the City’s own data.
Rather than just continuing with biannual cleanups of the entire city, Mayor Parker and the Office of Clean and Green Initiatives should prioritize additional monthly cleanups of the 1.5 percent of properties that have a disproportionately negative impact on quality of life for many of the Philadelphia most marginalized residents. By using data already available to them, the administration can strategically and proactively target the areas that most need support.
Nor does this need to come at the expense of cleaning the rest of the city. Even if the administration committed to cleaning these 7,500 parcels once a month, that would only amount to a roughly 7.5 percent increase over the total number of cleanups already needed to tackle Philly’s more than half a million properties twice a year.
Success hinges on taking a more targeted, data-driven approach.
The Parker administration has an opportunity to transform how Philadelphia handles issues like illegal dumping, vacancy and even gun violence. By using data to drive targeted interventions in high-priority areas, Mayor Parker can not only help us move past our “Filthadelphia” reputation, but create a more sustainable, equitable model for addressing the cycles of neglect and disinvestment that underlie these issues.
Cleaning and greening Philadelphia is not just a good slogan — it’s essential to the future of our city. We applaud Mayor Parker for prioritizing the issue, but we believe that success hinges on taking a more targeted, data-driven approach. By concentrating on the handful of neighborhoods most impacted by quality of life issues — places grappling with property vacancy, gun violence, and illegal dumping — the Parker administration can maximize the impact of the City’s considerable investments. This strategic focus won’t just clean streets; it will foster safer communities, create greener spaces, and help to build a more equitable Philadelphia. The data to guide these efforts already exist — now is the time to put them into action.
Nissim Lebovits and Amanda Soskin are the founder and interim executive director, respectively, of Clean & Green Philly.
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