Urban Sprawl and Public Health: Designing, Planning, and Building for Healthy Communities / Edition 1

by Howard Frumkin, Lawrence Frank, Richard J. Jackson

Overview

In Urban Sprawl and Public Health, Howard Frumkin, Lawrence Frank, and Richard Jackson, three of the nation's leading public health and urban planning experts explore an intriguing question: How does the physical environment in which we live affect our health? For decades, growth and development in our communities has been of the low-density, automobile-dependent type known as sprawl. The authors examine the direct and indirect impacts of sprawl on human health and well-being, and discuss the prospects for improving public health through alternative approaches to design, land use, and transportation.

Urban Sprawl and Public Health offers a comprehensive look at the interface of urban planning, architecture, transportation, community design, and public health. It summarizes the evidence linking adverse health outcomes with sprawling development, and outlines the complex challenges of developing policy that promotes and protects public health. Anyone concerned with issues of public health, urban planning, transportation, architecture, or the environment will want to read Urban Sprawl and Public Health.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781559633055
Publisher:	Island Press
Publication date:	07/09/2004
Edition description:	1
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Howard Frumkin, MD, DrPH is Senior Vice President of the Trust for Public Land, and professor emeritus of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences at the University of Washington School of Public Health, where he was Dean from 2010-2016.  He was previously head of Our Planet, Our Health at the Wellcome Trust, director of the National Center for Environmental Health and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (NCEH/ATSDR), and Special Assistant to the CDC Director for Climate Change and Health, and Professor and Chair of Environmental and Occupational Health at Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health and Professor of Medicine at Emory Medical School.

Dr. Frumkin has served on the Boards of the Bullitt Foundation, the Seattle Parks Foundation, the American Public Health Association, the US Green Building Council, the Children and Nature Network, and Physicians for Social Responsibility, among others.  He has served on the Steering Committee of the Planetary Health Alliance (Harvard University), as a faculty affiliate at UCLA’s Center for Healthy Climate Solutions, and on advisory committees to the Global Consortium on Climate and Health Education (Columbia University), the Medical Society Consortium on Climate & Health (George Mason University), EcoHealth International, and the Yale Center on Climate Change and Health.

He is the author, co-author, or editor of over 300 scientific journal articles, chapters, and books, including the standard environmental health textbook, Environmental Health: From Global to Local, and four Island Press titles.

Dr. Frumkin is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Collegium Ramazzini, and the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland, and an elected member of the Washington State Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine. He loves cycling, kayaking, and hiking. He is married to radio journalist Joanne Silberner, and has two children.
 


Larry Frank is Bombadier Chair in Sustainable Transportation Systems at the School of Community and Regional Planning at the University of British Columbia. He recently left the Georgia Institute of Technology where he was an assistant professor in the City Planning Program. He is a registered landscape architect and holds a master in Civil Engineering Transportation Planning and a Ph.D. in Urban Design and Planning from the University of Washington.




Richard J. Jackson, MD, MPH, is Professor and Chair of Environmental Health Sciences at the School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is also a faculty member in the departments of Pediatrics, Urban Planning, and the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA. A pediatrician and public health leader, he has served as State Health Officer for California and in many other leadership positions in both the environmental health and infectious disease fields. For nine years he was director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) National Center for Environmental Health in Atlanta, for which he received the Presidential Distinguished Service award.
While in California he helped establish the California Birth Defects Monitoring Program and state and national laws to reduce risks from dangerous pesticides, especially to farm workers and children. While at the CDC, he established the national asthma epidemiology and control program, oversaw the Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program, and instituted the current federal effort to "biomonitor" chemical levels in the U.S. population. In the late 1990s he was the CDC leader in establishing the U.S. National Pharmaceutical Stockpile to prepare for terrorism and other disasters (the stockpile was activated on September 11, 2001). He has received the Breast Cancer Fund's Hero Award, as well as Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Public Health Law Association and New Partners for Smart Growth. He received an MD from the University of California at San Francisco and an MPH from the University of California at Berkeley.
Dr. Jackson lectures and speaks on many issues, particularly those related to the built environment and health. He has co-authored two Island Press Books: Urban Sprawl and Public Health and, more recently, Making Healthy Places: Designing and Building for Health, Well-Being, and Sustainability with Andrew L. Dannenberg and Howard Frumkin. He is the narrator of a 2011 PBS special Designing Healthy Communities. He has served on many environmental and health boards, as well as the Board of Directors of the American Institute of Architects.

Table of Contents

	Preface	xi
	Acknowledgments	xix
Chapter 1	What Is Sprawl? What Does It Have to Do with Health?	1
	Defining and Measuring Sprawl	3
	Core Concepts: Land Use and Transportation	5
	Varieties of Sprawl	15
	The Subjective Experience of Sprawl	19
	Overview of This Book	22
Chapter 2	The Origins of Sprawl	26
	Transportation	27
	The Pull of the Suburbs	28
	Expanding Cities: From Growth to No Growth	34
	The Automobile Age	35
	Zoning	36
	Federal Housing Policy and Suburban Growth	38
	Urban Sprawl in the Postwar Years	39
	Conclusion	42
Chapter 3	The Evolution of Urban Health	44
	Urban Pestilence and Filth	46
	Industrial Pollution in Cities	57
	The Social Pathology of City Life	61
	The Future of Urban Health	64
Chapter 4	Air Quality	65
	Land Use, Transportation, Air Quality, and Health: A Model	65
	Travel Behavior, Emissions, and Air Quality	68
	Air Quality and Public Health	79
	Conclusion	89
Chapter 5	Physical Activity, Sprawl, and Health	90
	The Varieties of Physical Activity	92
	The Health Benefits of Physical Activity	94
	Physical Activity and the Built Environment	97
	Limits to What We Know	105
	Conclusion	107
Chapter 6	Injuries and Deaths from Traffic	109
	Motor Vehicle Crashes	110
	Pedestrian Injuries and Fatalities	113
	The Risk of Leaving Home	121
Chapter 7	Water Quantity and Quality With Steve Gaffield	123
	Water and Health: An Overview	123
	The Hydrology of Sprawl	126
	Sprawl and Water Quality	131
	Conclusion	135
Chapter 8	Mental Health	137
	The Mental Health Benefits of Sprawl	138
	The Mental Health Costs of Sprawl	139
	Driving and Mental Health	140
	Sprawl and Mental Health: The Big Picture	158
Chapter 9	Social Capital, Sprawl, and Health	161
	What Is Social Capital?	161
	The Decline of Social Capital	165
	Does Social Capital Affect Health?	166
	Does Sprawl Undermine Social Capital?	171
	The Role of Income Inequality	180
	Conclusion	184
Chapter 10	Health Concerns of Special Populations	186
	Women	186
	Children	188
	The Elderly	195
	Poor People and People of Color	197
	People with Disabilities	199
	Conclusion	200
Chapter 11	From Urban Sprawl to Health for All	201
	Healthy Places	202
	Smart Growth	204
	Limits to Smart Growth	213
	A Public Health Approach to Smart Growth	216
	A Shared Vision: Land Use and Transportation for Public Health	220
	Conclusion	221
	Notes	223
	Bibliography	279
	Index	325

Editorial Reviews

"Years ago, we could see that the correlation between sprawl and poor health should be made. Now it is done. Urban Sprawl and Public Healthdetails how our lifestyle leads to serious health problems. This book should be reviewed widely and its facts should be known by all of us. It will be one of the central texts of the New Urbanism."

author of Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream - Andres Duany

"Suburban sprawl is killing us. Increasingly, physicians, public health officials, planners, and designers recognize the relationships between our health and our built surroundings. Urban Sprawl and Public Health offers a cogent diagnosis of this health menace as well as timely prescriptions for healing our cities."

dean, School of Architecture, University of Texas at Austin - Frederick Steiner

"A growing body of research demonstrates that community design and our built environment have enormous potential for addressing many of our chief public health concerns. The authors convincingly argue that building a healthier future is not only possible, but essential."

MD, FACP, executive director, APHA - Georges C. Benjamin

"Urban Sprawl and Public Health is written for urban planners, public health practitioners, and the general public....Overall, the authors provide a well-informed discussion on urban planning and health issues and present feasible public health solutions that may be incorporated into many urban development projects."

Canadian Journal of Urban Research

"No one chooses to be obese, in poor health, or stuck in traffic. Frumkin, Jackson, and Frank make the compelling point that unless Americans are given more choice in where and how they live and travel, all of us will bear the burden, not just in terms of extra pounds, but also in terms of lower quality of life, higher health care costs, reduced life expectancy, and greater isolation, especially at the vulnerable beginning and end of our lives. I hope every elected and appointed official in the U.S. reads this book and then acts on it to avert the economic and health crisis that is fast headed our way."

Governor Parris N. Glendening

"Frumkin, Frank and Jackson acknowledge that sprawl does not fully explain our American lifestyle, but they present some pretty convincing evidence for changing the way we live."

Mobile AL Sunday Press-Register

"Urban Sprawl and Public Health is written for urban planners, public health practitioners, and the general public.
 
The authors acknowledge that Smart Growth initatives face barriers, such as market preferences for suburbs, but point out that solutions to these issues will require input from many sectors in society, including health professionals, planners and develpers. Yet Frumkin et al. also argue that there is a need for citizens to take greater responsibility for their personal daily activities and to have a healthy lifestyle.
 
Overall, the authors provide a well-informed discussion on urban planning and health issues and present feasible public health solutions that may be incorporated into many urban development projects."

Canadian Journal of Urban Research - Gary Christopher