The Association Between Street Construction Projects and Community Violence in New York City

Community violence is a major cause of injury and death in the USA. Empirical studies have identified that some place-based interventions of urban private places, such as remediations of vacant lots and buildings, are associated with reductions in community violence in surrounding areas. The aim of this study was to examine whether routine maintenance and repair of urban public places (e.g., street construction projects) are also associated with reductions in community violence, proxied by violent crime incidents. This staggered adoption difference-in-difference analysis investigated the association between street construction projects and community violence in New York City from 2010 to 2019, divided into 40 calendar quarters. The units of analysis were street-quarters (n = 155,280). Intervention street-quarters were those with completed projects in 2010-2019; control streets were those where projects were scheduled but not completed before 2019. The outcome of community violence was proxied by counts of crime and violence incidents reported to the New York Police Department, within street-quarters. There were 81,904 street-quarters with any community violence incidents (52.7%). We found that street construction projects were associated with a decrease in reckless endangerment (ATT = - 1.3%; 95% CI = - 2.1%, - 0.4%), robbery (ATT = - 3.4%; 95% CI = - 6.1%, - 0.7%), and weapons offenses (ATT = - 1.6%; 95% CI = - 3.0, - 0.08%) occurring on street-quarters. Street construction projects may be yet another type of place-based intervention to reduce community violence.