URBAN PLANNING : Group Hopes Greener Cities Will Be Safer : A nonprofit organization hopes to acquire 250 parks. Experts have long linked recreation, crime prevention.

Habitat isn’t just for wildlife. People need some green too.

To traditional environmental groups, the notion of conserving land for people might be a little strange. But to Martin Rosen, a self-described “old warhorse” from a host of environmental battles, the idea has a kind of self-evident wisdom to it. And a growing number of lawmakers, prompted by the perceived link between declining urban parkland and rising crime, are beginning to think so too.

Rosen is president of the Trust for Public Lands, a conservation group that is launching a $2.5-billion effort to make 12 American cities greener and, they hope, safer places for humans. Using money raised through private donations and public bond bills and working with community activists, Rosen’s group hopes to acquire as many as 250 properties for parks in cities nationwide over the next five years. He hopes the group’s activities will help leverage new federal funds aimed at fighting crime through prevention.

Sociologists and law enforcement experts have been drawing a connection between urban parks, recreation areas and crime prevention for several decades. After Watts erupted in violence in 1965, an investigation linked urban violence to the decay of city recreation facilities.

More than 25 years later, South-Central Los Angeles residents came to the same conclusion: In the wake of the 1992 riots, 77% told pollsters that the absence of parks and recreation facilities was among their top concerns.

The evidence doesn’t demonstrate clearly that deteriorating parkland and recreation facilities cause an upturn in crime, but the two do appear to be inextricably linked. And if crime and the demise of urban parks go together, then the revitalization of urban parkland, Rosen and other experts reckon, will contribute to a decline in lawlessness.

Many South-Central residents cite compelling evidence for the idea: In the 1992 riots, buildings on Union Avenue were torched, windows were shattered and businesses looted. But a community garden in the heart of Pico-Union, cleared several years before and tended by members of the 10th Street Mothers’ Club, stood untouched by the rampage.

“People had cleaned up those lots themselves,” said Brenda Funches, who leads the grass-roots gardening organization, Common Ground. “Anyone who has a history in the neighborhood remembers what these places looked like before, and the truth is, everybody knows somebody who is involved with the garden.”

Not all crime-busters see the connection. Steve Twist, director of the National Rifle Assn.’s Crime Strike program, called the idea of fighting crime with parks “hopelessly naive.”

“The problem of the collapse of the juvenile justice system is a problem of the revolving door. There are no significant consequences for chronic violent offenders.”

Anecdotal evidence from across the nation abounds. In Philadelphia, police helped neighborhood volunteers clean up vacant lots and plant gardens, and burglaries and thefts in the precinct dropped from about 40 per month to about four. In the summers of 1991 and 1993, Phoenix parks stayed open until midnight for basketball, swimming, volleyball and dancing, and police calls on juvenile crime dropped up to 55%.

With Congress focusing on the causes of crime, the link between violence and degenerating urban parks is receiving new scrutiny--and possibly new funds. The crime bill, now in House-Senate negotiations, is expected to establish a $23-billion trust fund from which initiatives for city parks could draw.

“Urban recreation and sports programs are a proven, common-sense and cost-effective means of preventing crime and delinquency,” said Rep. Bruce F. Vento (D-Minn.), co-sponsor of an amendment to the crime bill that would earmark crime prevention funds for urban parks and recreation programs. “Our urban crime rate would be different if these programs had not been neglected in the past decade.”

When the Trust for Public Lands conducted an inventory of parkland last year, it found that parks were concentrated in affluent neighborhoods in two-thirds of the cities it studied. In 16 out of 23 cities, the trust said parkland in poor neighborhoods was crowded and inadequate.

That kind of neglect, Rosen said, “sends a signal to troubled communities and youth that they’re not worth the investment.” And they will almost surely repay the nation with more hostility and more indifference, he added. Green areas in cities, he said, “aren’t (just) nice; they’re urgent, critical, vital areas that people require.”