Measuring the Health Effects of Sprawl

Smart Growth America  published the first national study to establish a direct association between the form of the community and the health of the people who live there... over a decade ago. The report that was also covered by BBC, the New York Times, USA Today, and NPR confirms the adverse relationship between urban sprawl and physical activity, obesity, and morbidity. The results are not surprising. Here's what we found out:

• people living in counties marked by sprawling development are likely to walk less and weigh more than people who live in less sprawling counties
• sprawling counties are more likely to suffer from high blood pressure
• the results hold true for factors of age, education, gender, race, ethnicity
• people in sprawling areas are missing out on significant health benefits that are available simply by walking, biking, climbing stairs, and being active as a part of everyday life
• 55 percent of Americans would like to walk more instead of driving;
• 52 percent would like to bike more

Now, onto the shocking part: We've been building, are building, and will continue to build communities - and not just ex-urban, but places we classify as cities - that prove detrimental to our health (think of many southeastern cities, like Atlanta). Instead we should be putting limits to our growth and thinking about maximizing space and becoming as efficient as possible. There are several reasons to do so besides the health benefits; less reliance on automobiles as well as the non-renewable fuel sources that come with transportation, conservation and preservation of land and habitat, the ability to create a more localized economy, closer-knit communities, etc. For starters that means less parking lots which is essentially dead space that promote driving. It's alarming that in some cities parking space covers a third of the land area, becoming such a dominant feature of our built environment that it has started to define it. Such dull environments obstruct our motivation and creativity. Limiting growth also means establishing city limits, mixed-use zoning regulations, transit-oriented development, narrow streets, and not just dense but compact development.

While American cities may not have much on our European counterparts, below are the 10 cities with the largest share of their populations in functional urban cores (most compact), and they may compare the closest. It wouldn't come as a surprise if some of these cities were also the most fit.
 

1. New York City (97.3 percent)

2. Buffalo (94.5 percent)

3. San Francisco (94.0 percent)

4. Boston (89.7 percent)

5. Hartford (87.4 percent)

6. Providence (86.5 percent)

7. St. Louis (84.1 percent)

8. Minneapolis (83.5 percent)

9. District of Colombia (83.4 percent)

10. Philadelphia (83.4 percent)

These should be the years for compact growth, urban infill, core renewal. How much containment and smart growth is possible? Hopefully the possibilities are not endless - at least spatially. But it all starts with a plan. 

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Sources & Links:

Measuring the Health Effects of Sprawl / Smart Growth America 

Almost Half of America's Biggest Cities Are Basically Built Like Giant Suburbs 

Urban Cores, Core Cities and Principal Cities  

America's Suburb Future

Urban vs. Suburban Growth in U.S. Metros 

U.S. Cities Are Slowing But Suburbs Are Growing

City Sprawl from 2000-2010 / CityLab 

Most Sprawling US Cities by Rank / CityLab

Parking Lots as Public Spaces / NY Times

Social Capital

Investing in PEOPLE. 

In my opinion, this is one of the most important things we can do; as individuals (investing in yourself), as families, neighborhoods, communities, cities... all the way up to a national and even global level. 

I like to think of social capital in my own way as the collective qualities of people in a community, as a result of the ability to have their basic needs met and access quality care - ultimately enabling them to prosper and propel their community and economy forward in a positive way. But "social capital" doesn't come from nothing; it takes time to establish and there are essential components that build social capital.

Meeting basic needs (housing, food, shelter, etc., refer to an older post) but also creating equal and plentiful (and free) opportunities for quality healthcare and education, are just some key ingredients that build social capital. I also believe you can take it a step further and say that in order to maximize social capital, there needs to be a connecting and trusting relationship between the people and the governing system. So in difficult times or times of crisis, people feel secure and trust that their basic needs will be met by the system that's designed to support them - this encourages a level of comfort that allow people to take risks and those circumstances help churn out possibilities for a better society. 

When people do not have good access to, for example, clean drinking water, many other important aspects of their life come to a pause because they're forced to revert back to using some of our most basic human instincts to simple get by. Staying alive and healthy, feeling secure and free from danger will certainly become before more skillful achievements. So, social capital cannot be improved when people and communities are stagnant in this tier, instead it will dumb down communities. And on larger scales, whether we are aware of it or not, these affects will be felt across society, furthering inequality.

These ideas were sparked by an article I read by AECOM's Chief Sustainability Officer, mentioning the 3 types of capital and the current challenges we face with integrating them. The other forms of capital, natural capital (Earth's resources) and financial capital, along with social capital, are essential to each of our lives every single day. Author Gary Lawrence makes the most important point:

"In stark contrast [to natural and financial capital,] the only natural resource that actually improves through use rather than being diminished is human capital. The inventiveness, intellectual ingenuity and diversity of our species are unique to Homo sapiens as far as we know. When the human mind is given the space to be curious and the opportunity to explore, great things become possible. This does not happen when the mind is occupied with feeding and sheltering the human body, scraping a subsistence living from day to day."

Sometimes it's easy to get caught up in managing and protecting natural and financial capital when it's really the human aspect that we need to absolutely secure. Because in order to effectively manage our resources and external challenges, we need to have the knowledge base built and capacity to do so intelligently, and of course always with future generations in mind.

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Read more at Environmental Leader 

Human Capital on Wikipedia
Social Capital / OECD 

"Shut Up and Listen!"

Since the advent of what we term "modern" and/or professional urban planning around the 1900's, it's clear that it may miss the point of what it's designed to do: plan for people. In my humble opinion, I believe this is partly because of a population explosion; before large cities we had towns and small villages - connected communities of people that, to a certain extent knew each other and worked for or with each other. As populations expanded, degrees of separation began to build between people, and we kind of forgot the most important element of all: each other. 

Dr. Sirolli is one of my Dad's friends who believes in a "person-centered approach to community and economic development," and he's been very successful with this. While it is not directly related to city planning, the messages he brings fourth are.

We must shut and up and listen. Listen to our family, friends, neighbors, co-workers; listen to our community. That's it. And yet while it seems simple, it's not easy. 

Dr. Sirolli makes another interesting point, he says that there is a problem with community meetings. "Entrepreneurs never come, and they never tell you, in a public meeting, what they want to do with their own money, what opportunity they have identified. So planning has this blind spot. The smartest people in your community you don't even know, because they don't come to your public meetings." This idea then, that Dr. Sirolli has capitalized on, has been to create a social infrastructure that hasn't existed previously, learning how to get people to come and talk to him and ultimately helping them based on their needs.

Some people might be wondering "well, what does this have to do with planning cities?" While in some ways, connecting entrepreneurs with a community's future brings the conversation to another level, at a basic level I can extract what's most important: Listening to communities, and not just communities, but individual people. Planners and community leaders shouldn't be there to direct but rather to connect, empathize, strategize, and represent. This builds trust, strong communities, even friendships.

In recent years it seems that there's been paradigm shift, putting the focus on the people of communities, with trail runs and experiments that involve everyone or "I Wish This Was" sticker campaigns. 

Final words from Dr. Sirolli's TED Talk:

"What we have to look at is at how we feed, cure, educate, transport, communicate for seven billion people in a sustainable way. The technologies do not exist to do that. Who is going to invent the technology for the green revolution? Universities? Forget about it! Government? Forget about it! It will be entrepreneurs, and they're doing it now."

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Links/sources:

Dr. Sirolli's TED Talk
Strategy and Business article about Dr. Sirolli
History of Urban Planning Wikipedia

Lessons in Walking & Cycling from Western Europe

Most of the cities in the United States evolved alongside and/or took off because of the automobile. Cities were planned and built with the car as the main mode of transportation; suburbs made possible thanks to cars. As a result we get wider streets, bigger blocks, lower density; whole metropolis areas that are excruciatingly spread out. This leads to the destruction of natural land and habitats, unsustainable development, and quite frankly it's just a waste that generates physical inefficiency on a massive scale.

European cities have been around much longer, and developed much of their infrastructure prior to the automobile being a widespread mode of transit. This is why Europe boasts cities with some of the best public transportation systems in the world. Railways were built beginning in the mid 19th century, but you can imagine before that it was just smaller dirt roads for walking and eventually horses. Early settlements weren't formally planned, rather they would have evolved on a needs basis based on accessibility by foot. Hence, comparing typical European and American cities might look like this (source):

It's no wonder that European city residents walk and bike so much more - everything is relatively close together. Few US cities use space similarly to their European counterparts - New York City, San Francisco, Boston would be the closest examples. I was thrilled to find an article comparing walking and biking trends between these places, with of course a focus on the countries that do it exceptionally well: the Netherlands, Denmark, and Germany. I pulled some great visuals from the article to check out. 

Walking and even more so biking in most US cities is simply unsafe. In addition to infrastructure that is built for and around cars, our brains and habits have been wired for driving. We've adapted to car-centric environments that largely don't incorporate any other form of transit at all, depending on where we are. Feeling safe - and knowing that our loved ones are safe - while traveling from home to school or work is probably the biggest factor in choosing a mode of transportation. If we don't have confidence in getting from point A to point B by foot or bike in a reliable manner, we won't do it. Yet ironically enough, cars are far more dangerous to life. This disconnect between perception and reality only exists because of the type of physical environment we've built and continue to build today. The good news is that many American cities are starting to catch on to opening streets to more than just cars.

Countries home to bicycle-friendly cities like Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and Berlin, where a third or even up to half of the people commute by bike, have far fewer casualties and injuries when compared to the US where a measly 3 percent travel by bike. This is a difference in infrastructure as well as habits and behavior. It is also convincing that as more people hop on their bikes, the safer the commute will become. This very trend of the "safety in numbers" has taken place in Denmark and Germany.

The article cites a number of strategies that have worked well in European cities and can encourage more walking and cycling in the US. This includes cracking down on safety; policies that promote walking and cycling but also restrict car use like auto-free zones. Bike infrastructure can look different depending on the place as long as it includes elements of comfort and safety, clearly marked bike lanes or separate paths, allowing width for more sociable rides. Right-of-ways and separate bike traffic signals, or even cycle super highways like this new one in Copenhagen, called the "Cykelslangen" or "cycle snake." Additional techniques for more biking and walking include traffic calming, integrating these trips with other methods of public transit, compact mixed-use development, introducing these concepts from an early age, more training, traffic regulations, and broader policies like road capacity, limiting park spaces, and taxes on cars and fuel. Finally it's necessary to keep in mind that a combination of techniques are needed to have successful rates of walking and biking, and no one strategy should be used. American cities have a few fantastic models, but we shouldn't expect to get the same results by duplicating something else. Each city must formulate what will work best for its people, because only those people come first... and last!


Sources:
The New Climate Economy / Chapter on Cities
Transportation Research News / Walking and Cycling in Western Europe and the US 

Another interesting opinion:
Yale Environment 360 / On Biking, Why Can't the US Learn Lessons from Europe 

Design for Wellbeing in the Built Environment

My first post to this blog, almost one year ago now, focused on designing future environments for the wellbeing of its people. Today I will take it back to the topic with Professor Libby Burton's Legacy Lecture: The Pursuit of Happiness. I share many, if not all of Professor Burton's words in her video (below) - she is interested in creating environments that make people happy and help people flourish. I would like to review the key information from her 30-minute talk. 

People are starting to ask the question "How do the environments around us make us feel?" I believe that is one of the most important questions today, and I would like to help answer it. It's a new topic of interest that has emerged in recent years for a few reasons. Firstly, research concludes that health and health issues are lifestyle related. The classic example is of people being thinner and more heart healthy in cities or higher density areas. Also, physical health and mental health are equally important yet so intertwined. And finally, developing sustainably will only be successful if we first consider peoples needs and desires. The built environment plays the biggest role in these three facets. 

Well being is directly affected by the built environment in these ways:

• Mood - the immediate world around us has considerable influence on our ever-changing outward and expressive moods
• Feeling - how does this place make us feel on the inside
• Stress levels and stress tolerance - a relaxing environment will help balance out high energy or stress levels
• Functionality - does the environment serve its purpose and allow you to efficiently accomplish the task at hand?
• Concentration - too many distractions can lead to a loss of focus
• Coping with mental disorders - Libby uses the example of repetitive street patterns negatively impacting people with dementia 
• Experience of pain
• Physical discomfort (body temperature) and safety from injury 
• Satisfaction with life - Libby uses the example of status of housing

The built environment affects us indirectly as well:

• Physical activity
• Social engagement and interaction, community spirit
• Biophilia - human connection to nature and other living systems
• Accessibility
• Attachment and belonging - sense of place, uniqueness
• Safety and security
• Competence and accomplishment
• Autonomy and independence
• Equality

So far, this is what we know: 

• Density encourages walking, social interaction and community engagement
• Mixed-use, medium-rise, local facilities and amenities in an irregular grid pattern are the most functional
• Greenery: as much as possible without sacrificing density
• Transition zones: there should be soft edges between public and private space to encourage social interaction 
• Housing layouts should offer a balance of communal and private space
• "Eyes on the street:" plenty of windows towards the street to foster feelings of safety
• Maximize day lighting
• Clear differentiation between public and private space
• Attractiveness of the environment

The smells and sounds of our immediate environments in cities help us gather and process information, but we are visually wired animals; almost 50 percent of our brain is involved in visual processing, 70 percent of all our sensory receptors are in our eyes, and we can get the sense of a visual scene in less than 1/10 of a second. That information forms short-term emotions that turn into lasting feelings with positive and negative impacts on our overall wellbeing. It's crucial that we carefully design our built environments for prolonged success. 


Click to see Libby Burton's Legacy Lecture