Designing Healthy Communities Hardcover – October 25, 2011
Author: Richard J. Jackson | Language: English | ISBN: 1118033663 | Format: PDF, EPUB
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Q&A with the Authors of Designing Healthy Communities
Is there a connection between the built environment of our communities and our health?
Where we live affects how we live. The houses and communities in which we live are very much the product of the safe water, food, transport, education, medical, and public health systems our grandparents created. People of wealth find places to live that are safe, with good air quality and water, affordable transportation, recreation and park amenities, lively culture, and healthful food.
The poor deserve these benefits as well; there is no reason for these fundamental needs to go unmet. Providing these benefits need not be costly, but it does require good design and collaborative planning.
Why the emphasis on communities? Isn't design about commercial and residential viability, access, and traffic flow?
There are many, many facets to community design, but promoting health is rarely one of them. Just as the core tenet of medicine is “First, do no harm,” so should this be the first rule of design. If our food, clothing, workplaces, and cars should all be designed with our health in mind, so should our communities. Thousands of years ago the progenitors of architecture understood this—buildings needed to be strong, useful, and have beauty.
Doing no harm today means constructing buildings that give us security, daylight, clean air, energy efficiency, places to walk, and stairs to climb. And it means designing streets that welcome people, all of us, in safety—not just users of motor vehicles, but walkers and bicyclists, old and young, agile or disabled, wealthy or poor. Design is about life and vitality, happiness and connection—one element is commerce, but commerce is not enough.
All of this seems kind of self-evident: of course people should walk, socialize, and have beautiful environments, but how can we afford the kinds of changes you’re suggesting?
A sedentary lifestyle increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, stroke, and mortality, whereas physical activity prolongs life. So how can we afford not to make these changes? And yet, we fail to build such places. When we focus on short term outcomes, quick returns on investment, we discount the future. When we build for the long term, when we build for well-being, we would build good communities. . . this is a fine investment, and one that pays off. For health we require community and beauty as much as we require rest and food. It is what earlier generations did.
Children need to grow up in safe and loving places with healthful food, physical activity, good education, and increasing socialization and autonomy. They should be afforded environments that require them to grow not just physically, and certainly not to grow fat or unhealthy, but to grow to be independent and intellectually incisive.
Yet for more than the last fifty years, we have increasingly diminished the life range of our children and the security of working families. We legislated, subsidized, and embraced a culture that has encouraged only financial capital and neglected natural, social, cultural, and intellectual capital. Our trajectory is ruinous, but reversible, if we are smart.
Aren't you just arguing for gentrification? What happens to poor people if we make places more desirable for higher income people?
Warehousing and isolating poor people in one place leads to dismal services and cultural failure, as does isolating the wealthy in enclaves. Children need to grow with challenges and amid diversity. We can get comfort from familiar surroundings and friends, but too constant a diet breeds deviance and inflexibility. We all need to learn to get along with each other.
Is there proof that making walkable, bikable, and socially-connected communities makes people healthier and happier?
There’s considerable proof. People in highly walkable neighborhoods record more walking trips per week, especially for errands and going to work, which translates into a higher total amount of physical activity with its associated health benefits.
The same is true for those who use rail transit. We know that people who exercise, walk, or bike in green spaces are less depressed. Drivers in traffic jams frown and have higher blood pressure and heart attack risks. Bicyclists on safe routes seem to smile more and are certainly healthier.
You seem to be arguing for a return to old-fashioned towns that went out with the horse and buggy.
I’m not arguing for a blindly nostalgic return to the past, but I am arguing for vigilance against a way of life that promotes pollution, heart disease, cancer, injury, and social isolation. I am arguing for living in places where we meet our life needs wasting little fossil fuel, for being with our family and friends, being physically vital—walking, running, and playing— and eating local, healthful food, without being owned by our cars and our staggering mortgages and college costs. Yes, that is exactly what I am arguing for. And the market place validates this: our young people have looked at their parents’ stressed car-dependent life styles and are saying, “This is wasteful . . . this is boring . . . I don’t want that.” They are opting for the America their great-grandparents told them was great.
Review
“It’s called the ‘built environment’ and if you’re a public health whiz, you know exactly what that means. If you don’t, Dr. Richard Jackson, Chair of UCLA’s Environmental Health Sciences Department believes it’s critical you do.” – The California Report health blog, KQED (San Francisco)
“An admirer of landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, Dr. Jackson argues that such details of daily life make existence worthwhile. And that is what “Designing Healthy Communities” is all about.” – Reporting on Health (USC Annenberg)
“The new book, “Designing Healthy Communities,” says: ‘When there is nearly nothing within walking distance to interest a young person and it is near-lethal to bicycle, he or she must relinquish autonomy — a capacity every creature must develop just as much as strength and endurance.’” – New York Times, January, 31, 2012
Direct download links available for Designing Healthy Communities – October 25, 2011
- Hardcover: 304 pages
- Publisher: Jossey-Bass; 1 edition (October 25, 2011)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1118033663
- ISBN-13: 978-1118033661
- Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 7.4 x 0.9 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #372,066 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Anthony Iton
Preface ix
The Author xvii
Prologue: Why I Care About the Built Environment xix
PART I. HEALTH AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT: AN INTRODUCTION
Chapter 1What Does Love, or Caritas, Have to Do with the Built Environment? 3
We Love Our Families and Our Country, but Do We Really Love Ourselves? 4
For Love of Family 6
For Love of Community 7
For Love of Our Nation and the World 14
Chapter 2What Is Health, and How Do We Measure It? 15
Personal Health 17
Public Health Policy 23
Environmental Health 28
Mental and Social Health 30
Chapter 3Can the Built Environment Build Community? 35
Organic Places Are Healthy Places 36
Urban Centers 41
State and Nation 45
PART II. EXAMPLES OF CHANGE
Chapter 4From Monoculture to Human Culture: the Belmar district of Lakewood, Colorado 53
Symptoms 54
Diagnosis 60
Cure 62
Prevention 64
Chapter 5Using New Urbanism Principles to Build Community: Prairie Crossing, Illinois 67
Symptoms 69
Diagnosis 70
Cure 73
Prevention 77
Chapter 6Saving America’s Downtowns and Local History Through the Political Process: Charleston, South Carolina 79
Symptoms 80
Diagnosis 82
Cure 86
Prevention 88
Chapter 7Reinventing a Healthy City Through Community Leadership for Sustainability: Elgin, Illinois 91
Symptoms 92
Diagnosis 94
Cure 98
Prevention 104
Chapter 8Ending Car Captivity: Boulder, Colorado 107
Symptoms 108
Diagnosis 110
Cure 115
Prevention 117
Chapter 9Ports as Partners in Health: Oakland, California 119
Symptoms 120
Diagnosis 123
Cure 132
Prevention 135
Chapter 10The City That Won’t Give Up: Detroit, Michigan 139
Symptoms 140
Diagnosis 144
Cure (or at Least Treatment) 146
Prevention 155
PART III. BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE IN THE WORLD
Chapter 11What’s Happening in Your Community? 159
Determining the Health of Your Community 159
Conducting an Audit of Your Built Environment 166
Chapter 12Who Are the Players? 175
Finding Your Stakeholders 178
Social Networking 187
Getting Everyone to Pull Together 188
Chapter 13Create an Action Plan 189
Analyze the Symptoms 189
Determine the Diagnosis 194
Implement the Cure 195
Protect Through Prevention 206
Epilogue: Now It’s Your Turn 207
Notes 213
Index 219
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