A cross-disciplinary team of researchers at The University of Alabama, the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the University of New Hampshire found a surprising connection between urban park size, crime and community health. The results point to a new understanding of the value of community parks in urban neighborhoods.
The researchers examined community health outcomes in the neighborhoods surrounding nearly 1,000 urban parks across the state of Alabama. Park size was precisely measured using high-resolution satellite imagery and verified with Google Earth and Google Street View. By integrating and spatially matching these data with CDC health indicators and crime rate statistics from the Environmental Systems Research Institute, the study employed geospatial analysis to confirm that larger urban parks are associated with better community mental and physical health, primarily through their effect on reducing neighborhood crime rates.
The question of collective mental health in park-adjacent communities has long been a murky one. This finding provides empirical evidence of the relationship between urban parks, neighborhood crime, and community mental health.
The project’s findings, published in leading health journals, revealed that larger urban parks can be connected to better community health—but through a surprising mechanism.
“We found that larger community parks are significantly associated with less crime,” said Dr. Lewis H. Lee, an associate professor in UA’s School of Social Work. “But there’s no direct effect from urban park size and mental health in our analysis. However, larger park size is associated with better mental health at the community level through its impact on the crime risk.”
The Urban Parks Team Assembles
The project’s foundation began when Lee and Dr. Gibran Mancus met at a faculty reception shortly after Lee arrived on campus in 2018. Mancus, who is now an assistant professor of nursing at the University of New Hampshire, shared an interest in the intersections of community health, infrastructure and crime.
Their discussions grew into an earlier project in collaboration with Dr. Hon K. Yuen, a professor and director of research in occupational therapy at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. In 2022, Yuen proposed another collaboration to build on their earlier work to better understand the relationship between urban parks and collective health indicators.
Early Challenges
Lee, Yuen, and Mancus had compiled information about park amenities, working on a hypothesis that the number of amenities a park offered would positively affect community mental health, as measured using CDC health data for Alabama urban communities.
Lee, who primarily led the analysis, found himself stumped by their initial findings.
“We found that urban parks with more features — more amenities — were statistically related to poor mental health in the surrounding community, which was unexpected and contrary to our original hypothesis.”
At that point, the team had invested about two years of work in the project. A comprehensive review of the literature suggested another variable: crime rates. They further determined that statistically and practically meaningful results would require integrating the data within a geospatial framework.
The Missing Piece
The team invited Dr. Akhlaque Haque, a professor and geospatial analysis expert from UAB’s department of political science and public administration, to tackle the question of geospatial accuracy.
Haque suggested two methodological improvements: first, geospatially matched data, and second, incorporating updated park data from a reliable source, such as the ParkServe Database, which is compiled and managed by the Trust for Public Land. The team then validated these data through ground truthing using Google Earth. This gave them an objective measurement with which to compare urban parks rather than amenities, which may not be comparable across the parks.
While these changes led to a more rigorous and scientifically sound analysis, the data showed that urban park size was statistically significant with community physical health but not with community mental health.
“I always tell my students, ‘If you have a challenging analysis, don’t think about grandiose theories or ambitious method solutions. Go back to the basics.’”
Dr. Lewis H. Lee
He revisited the correlation output and found a clear link between larger parks and a lower crime risk, which led him to consider crime rates as a potential mediator of the relationship between park size and community mental health. This idea that reduced crime may serve as a pathway linking larger parks to better mental health outcomes had not before been well documented.
Making the Dream Work
Lee said collaboration was key to the studies’ findings. Earlier stages of the studies on urban parks and health produced conflicting results, and initially, the UA-led team faced data quality issues of their own.
“Our project reflects the growing recognition of the importance of environmental and neighborhood-level factors,” Lee said. “Our collaboration across multiple disciplines was essential in generating insights that are both methodologically rigorous and relevant.”
This study provides firm evidence that urban parks contribute to both physical and mental health benefits, even if indirectly. It is a strong case for not only the preservation of urban parks as an amenity, but for including them in the planning and design phase as part of the framework for reducing neighborhood crime.
“As researchers, our hope is that planners can use our work as they are making and updating policy.”
Further research will assess whether the lessons learned in Alabama can be replicated nationally to support health-promoting urban design.