Summary
Authors: Sonia Di Carlo, John Holmberg, and Bambi Yost.
Date: Spring 2004
Related Video:
Castro Elementary Anti-Grafitti Project
Purpose
This project was conducted for credit within the Urban Spatial Analysis course at the University of Colorado Denver Department of Urban and Regional Planning, under the guidance of Professor Yuk Lee.
Research Question
Do ‘Learning Landscapes’ – special playgrounds in Denver that are planned, designed, and built with community members – have an impact on the level of graffiti found on these playgrounds and in their surrounding neighborhoods and is there an explainable and visible pattern for this behavior?
Spatial Analysis of the Learning Landscapes’ Impact on Graffiti in Denver Neighborhoods and on Denver’s Public Elementary School playgrounds
Methods
- Informal phone interviews with Denver’s Gang Task Force, Denver Police, and Partners Against Graffiti were performed by Sonia Di Carlo. Bambi Yost met with Partners Against Graffiti and Denver Public Schools to discuss their findings more thoroughly.
- Data was collected from the City of Denver, Piton Foundation, Denver Public Schools, The Learning Landscape Alliance, and others.
- Formal phone interviews were conducted by way of telephone and focus group meetings and e-mail correspondence. Questions were left open-ended and intentionally focused on solutions as opposed to problems. 35 faculty members participated in these interviews.
- Observers went to twenty-seven elementary schools and rated the visible conditions of the neighborhood. The reviewers spent an average of fifty minutes observing the playgrounds of elementary schools and the neighborhood in a two-block radius. All observations were assigned numeric values.
- Initial contact was made with Principals by e-mail asking for on-line input and the assistance of organizing focus groups. Three schools agreed to organize meetings immediately. All of these schools are suffering from high amounts of gang activity or graffiti in their neighborhood or on school property. These schools are: Munroe Elementary, Castro Elementary, and Mitchell Elementary.
- An On-Line Survey was conducted by way of e-mail to over 150 individuals and an urban and regional planning list serve. The majority of the survey recipients had participated in a Learning Landscape Project. Tabulation of results was conducted by Survey Monkey, an on-line database engine created to administer surveys. This data was then loosely interpreted using qualitative feedback as an indicator of community investment.
- Numbers of Denver Public schools graffiti work orders, and number of Partner Against Graffiti graffiti reports were counted.
Results
- The most important factor contributing to high levels of graffiti seem to be the economic conditions of the neighborhood. The statistical correlations of high counts of graffiti reports to high levels of poverty were found to be significant.
- Playgrounds with completed Learning Landscapes were more likely to have lower observed counts of graffiti in relation to their surrounding neighborhoods.
- This study indicates that the Learning Landscape Initiative has reduced the amount of graffiti on playgrounds that have completed Learning Landscapes.
- The statistical analysis resulted in positive correlations linking crime rates, poverty, free lunches, and graffiti work order counts to reduced levels of graffiti observed on completed Learning Landscapes in a cross-tabulation analysis.
- Partial builds, which appear to be abandoned to the uninformed, actually seem to increase the level of graffiti on the playgrounds for the year of incompletion. This is a very important finding indicating that phasing of designs is not necessarily the most beneficial action for the school to take.