In 1982, social scientists George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson described a correlation that suggests that visible signs of disorder and uncleanliness in neighborhoods can lead to an increase in more serious crime, calling it Broken Windows Theory.

“At the community level, disorder and crime are usually inextricably linked, in a kind of developmental sequence,” Kelling and Wilson wrote in their article, Broken Windows. “Untended property becomes fair game for people out for fun or plunder.”

According to data and neighbor responses in the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Housing survey, Philadelphia ranked third in the United States in block litter.

Cleaning and greening advocates point to Broken Windows Theory as one explanation for Philly’s gun violence, and seek to address the issue through programs that beautify city neighborhoods. Different organizations have taken charge in recent years to add these innovative approaches of counteracting violence on numerous city blocks. 

One example is Philly Safe, a non-profit organization with a mission to deter violence through street cleaning, lighting, greening, and home security.

Founders Bob Kothari, Walter Buckley, and the Pastor of the Grace Baptist Church of Germantown, Reverend Dr. James Henry Buck, first connected in 2021 as Philadelphia was reaching record-setting rates of gun violence.

“I had just moved back into the city in 2020, and there wasn’t only a pandemic of COVID, but there was a [epidemic] of gun violence,” Kothari said.

Kothari first conducted research from the old Office of the Controller database and saw that 80% of the city’s shootings from 2020 to 2022 took place in 14 of the city’s zip codes, concentrated mostly in North and West Philadelphia. 

“It’s actually very contained,” Kothari said. “I thought, why can’t we do something here if we know exactly where it is.”

Kothari, Buck, and Buckley approached the Police Department and city officials with their findings, and it was emphasized to them “that the city of Philadelphia would never have enough police officers to protect the city,” Kothari said.  

They realized that of the city’s 6,000+ officers, only 2,500 are ever on regular patrol, making it a difficult task for the police to consistently protect a city of over 1.5 million people. 

From there, Kothari, Buck, and Buckley shifted their focus to the ideology that became the driving force for Philly Safe’s founding.

“We found a body of work in epidemiology that basically says if you change the place, you change the behavior, and if you change the behavior, you change the culture,” Kothari said. “It’s all under an area of study called place-based investments.”

When studying the concept of place-based investments, he said he identified “four things, in which each one individually had been proven to reduce violent crime: clean the streets, green the streets, light the streets, and [add] home security cameras.”

Over the past two years, Philly Safe has left its mark by heavily addressing 23 blocks in North Philadelphia where it conducts weekly street cleanings, and has had a presence on 41 total blocks, where it’s installed over 400 planters and solar lights for residents. All services are free.

Philly Safe’s area of focus has been the 19132 zip code, which ranked second in shooting victims in 2020, third in 2021, and fourth in 2022 out of all zip codes, according to Independent Variable’s data dashboard.

“It’s a beautiful thing when you see the blocks who have bought in,” Kothari said. “They all have a planter in front of their house, they all have solar lighting at night and the street is lit up, and they get weekly street cleaning.”

In the fall of 2024, they began to offer home security systems for residents in the area of focus and will implement around 100 systems in their 41-block focus.

They are also members of the collective known as Area 32, composed of six non-profit organizations with different means of interactive programming to counter the high rates of gun violence in the zip code and surrounding areas.

In recent years, not only has firearm violence steadily dropped in zip codes that were identified to have the highest rates, but throughout the city as a whole.

Throughout the entire city from 2022 to 2024, shooting victims decreased by 51%, as the number went from 2,270 to 1,105. In the 19132 zip code, gun violence decreased by 49%, dropping to 87 shooting victims from 172 during the same period.

Adam Serlin, a data scientist and the founder of Independent Variable, developed the database to help the organizations of Area 32 track statistics related to gun violence in their neighborhoods, helping inform the impact and direction of their work.

This tool, where he compiles data from the Police Department and the city, is something Serlin hopes can be a resource that anyone in the general public can use.

In the Northwest section of the city, similar work began in March of 2024 when the Mt. Airy CDC, partnering with State Senator Art Haywood and Glitter, launched the Safe Steps Northwest Initiative. Safe Steps committed to cleaning 300+ blocks that scored the highest for violent crime in Germantown and Mt. Airy.

“Based on a lot of research, we saw that blocks that are cared for and cleaner, are naturally less attractive for crime and violence,” said the executive director of Mt. Airy CDC, Phil Dawson. “[Individuals taking part in] those sorts of activities usually look for areas that seem unmanaged, unmonitored and not as well kept.”

With the support of Senator Haywood, the CDC received a grant of $800,000 from the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency to utilize for the work on its target block list. 

“The hope is that neighbors’ lives have been better; that people feel better, feel more pride in their blocks, and perhaps some lives have even been saved by this,” Dawson said.

Glitter is a four-year-old organization that provides affordable street cleaning services and job opportunities in neighborhoods across the city. The organization is the contracted cleaner for Safe Steps, hiring workers and facilitating the block cleanups.

“Regularly weekly cleaning on a block is necessary, some neighborhoods already get that service, if you look at Center City or some of the commercial corridors,” CEO of Glitter, Brandon Pousley said. 

In October 2024, Mt. Airy CDC conducted a review to examine the impact of the block cleaning work that began in June, with Dawson saying that they “calculated that in the city as a whole, gun violence had gone down by 40% at that point, and on the blocks we’ve been cleaning, it had gone down 52%.”

Shyara Hill was a block cleaner for Glitter before being promoted to the role of Neighborhood Engagement Lead. She has been deeply immersed in the work since being hired in the spring of 2024, as she has contributed to cleaning over 120 blocks.

“Random people would just walk up and say, can I help you? Yeah. So it was bringing people together and helping them hear about their environment,” Hill said.

“People intuitively know that if the only thing you know when growing up in a neighborhood is how the streets look and trash and litter, then that’s what becomes the norm,” Pousley said. “Step one really is to address the physical environment; changing the course of the state of the residential blocks on a week-to-week basis, not an annual basis.”