• Contents
• Message from the Co-General Editors
• Time Allocations
• GPS Receivers
• Transportation Indicators
• Forecasting Cycles
• Grain Buyers
• Positive Train Control
• Truck-Only Highway Lanes
• Oil Pipeline Markets
• Airline Passenger Profiling Systems
• Traffic Safety

• Table of Contents
• Journal Archives
• TRF Home

Book Review

Frumkin, Howard, Lawrence Frank, and Richard Jackson. Urban Sprawl and Public Health: Designing, Planning, and Building for Healthy Communities. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2004. ISBN 1559633050.

Frank, Lawrence D., Peter O. Engelke, and Thomas L. Schmid. Health and Community Design: The Impact of the Built Environment on Physical Activity. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2003. ISBN 1559639172.

Urban Sprawl and Public Health: Designing, Planning, and Building for Healthy Communities
and
Health and Community Design: The Impact of the Built Environment on Physical Activity

In these two books the medical profession has provided planners with the scientific evidence that the followers of Jane Jacobs and many pedestrians, transit users, and bicyclists have intuitively known for years - that the American automobile-dependent transportation system is injuring the public's physical, mental and societal health. The suburbs have now joined the cities as unhealthy places to live - thanks to the air, water and land pollution and societal problems caused by a transportation system dependent on the automobile, its highways, and its parking lots. The pedestrian and the transit user have been elevated from minor problems for planners to groups worthy of much more solicitation and concern.

Urban Sprawl and Public Health gives the medical details on how auto, highway, and parking lot pollution affect the physical, mental, and social environment and the undesirable effects on the life styles of people, especially children. Urban Sprawl also gives also gives an encyclopedic coverage of all the direct and indirect medical effects of sprawl on public health.

Health and Community Design describes some urban design practices and policies that could correct the ill effects resulting from our overdependence on the automobile. This book emphasizes the need for a supportive environment for walkers and how to slow traffic to speeds that are safe for pedestrians and bicyclists.

Urban Sprawl and Public Health gives many medical details on the scientific relationships between urban sprawl and pubic health problems. Two of its authors, Howard Frumkin and Richard Jackson, are medical doctors who have specialized in studying the medical effects of urban and suburban auto friendly design on the urban environment. They have researched in detail the effects on the general public of pollution caused by the automobile transportation system and its impact on urban design.

The third author, Larry Frank, is a landscape architect, transportation planner, and land-use planner who has studied how urban design has influenced travel patterns, physical activity, obesity, and pollution. He traces these public health problems to the decisions of transportation and urban planners to serve the needs and convenience of the automobile driver over the last 50 years at the expense of children, the poor, and the health of the general population.

This book is written for designers, planners, and architects interested in the physical, mental, and societal effect of their design and architecture on public health. This book also provides the medical evidence for the opinions of Jane Jacobs and her followers about the harm caused by an urban environment designed for people in cars and not for people per se. This book is also very useful for pedestrians, transit users, and bicyclists who desire a thorough rendition of the scientific evidence of negative effects on the public's mental, physical and societal health by the auto highway planners during the last 50 years. The bibliography is 43 pages long and is encyclopedic in its coverage.

Chapter One defines "sprawl" as "dispersed, auto-dependent development outside of compact urban and village centers, along highways, and in rural countryside" and discusses related core concepts such as "compactness (land use density and mix), diversity (the mixture of use over an area), sense of place (vibrancy of activity centers in region), and connectivity (street network accessibility)."

Chapter Two (The Origins of Sprawl) reviews the history of the growth of cities, especially as seen in urban sprawl since World War II. Chapter Three (The Evolution of Urban Health) introduces the field of "urban health," encompassing the customary areas of "public health."

The next eight chapters report on the specific health implications of sprawl on the population. Chapter Four focuses on air pollution. Chapter Five discusses sprawl's effect on physical activity, especially the obesity trend noted among Americans. Chapter Six gives the statistics and analysis of the injuries and deaths caused by traffic accidents. Chapter Seven reports on the effect of traffic pollution, highways, parking lot, and sprawl on water quality. Chapter Eight reports on the effect of sprawl on mental health in our suburbs.

The next two chapters look at the sociological impact and pathology caused by sprawl and limited transportation options available in local communalities. Chapter Nine (Social Capital, Sprawl, and Health) makes an estimate of the drain on social capital and societal stress caused by this sprawl. Chapter Ten (Health Concerns of Special Population) analyzes impacts on the specific groups of children, the poor, the elderly, people with disabilities, minorities and the affluent commuters living in the suburbs and exurbias.

Chapter Eleven (From Urban Sprawl to Health for All) surveys the different solutions for these sprawl problems suggested by "smart growth." It recommends the union of public health knowledge with urban planning.

Health and Community Design describes in much greater detail the relationships between urban and transportation design and the growing health and obesity problems in our cities and suburbs.

Lawrence Frank is professor of Sustainable Urban Transportation, University of British Columbia; Peter Engelke is a research associate at Georgia Tech; and Thomas Schmid is coordinator of the Active Community Environment Study (ACES) at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

In Chapter One, Frank, Engelke, and Schmid set forth their book's thesis. It is that most Americans do not get enough physical exercise. This public health problem should be addressed by designing communities which are conducive to walking and bicycling.

In "Public Health and American Historical Precedents" (Chapter Two), they relate the history of how our neighborhood districts became dispersed and disconnected. Ironically, public health issues were the early incentive for people leaving the crowded unhealthy central cities. As outlying areas became established, zoning regulations were instituted partly for public health reasons, often to the exclusion of the poor.

The Regional and Planning Association of America in the 1920's examined the problems of suburban design as it was impacted by the automobile. Their solution was to place residential areas in the spaces between major roads and thoroughfares dividing local from through traffic. This had the disadvantage of isolating neighborhoods from each other and from the larger community. This loss of linkage reduced the opportunities for walking and bicycling.

Chapters Three, Four and Five deal with three aspects of physical activity and public health. First the authors link habits of physical inactivity to the problem of overweight and obesity and to increased high blood pressure, diabetes and osteoarthritis.

In Chapter Four (Physical Activity: Types and Patterns) the authors compare programs of structured activity, often athletic in nature, with activities such as walking to school or stores and bicycling to work. They maintain that such purposeful activities are perhaps more beneficial in maintaining good health than strenuous types of exercise. Moreover, they are inexpensive, convenient, useful, and easily worked into daily routine.

Chapter Five relates physical activity to the lives of children, the elderly, and the poor. The built environment too often limits children's physical activity. For instance, walking to school has greatly decreased since the 1970's because of more and faster traffic and longer distances between home and school. Cul-de-sac residential developments limit children's ability to travel independently to nearby communities.

The authors realize that the elderly need extra incentives to forego the security, convenience, and comfort of the automobile. They maintain, however, that when distances are not too great and with proper sidewalks, well-designed crosswalks, slower traffic, and longer pedestrian signals, the elderly will walk, take transit and even bicycle. They already do so in compact well-connected neighborhoods.

The authors point out the connections between poverty, ill health, and physical inactivity. Lower rates of car ownerships would seem to favor active travel modes. However, the distances between poor neighborhoods and available jobs often mean long dangerous walks or bicycle rides along multilane highways. Buford Highway in Atlanta is a case in point. It has seven lanes of high speed traffic, few intersections, sidewalks, or crosswalks. Pedestrian fatalities and injuries are the result.

In Chapter Six (Understanding the Built Environment), Frank, Engelke and Schmid analyze our man-made environment in terms of (1) transportation system, (2) land-use patterns and (3) urban design characteristics and how to relate each of the three to physical activity.

Transportation systems should have high-connectivity, that is, they should minimize the difference between the "crow fly" and the "network" distances. They should be seamless rather than fragmented.

The land use component includes the special arrangement of the various structures within the environment. Here again, density is desirable as trip lengths are reduced and walking and bicycling are encouraged. Mixed land use results in development that is higher in connectivity and proximity than is common in most U.S. cities.

The design element of the built environment is important. Designing for safety and aesthetic interest results in streets attractive to walkers and cyclists. There are divergent requirements for these - sidewalks and crosswalks for one; bike paths and lanes for the other - low traffic and few stops for the cyclist; detailed, interesting, frequent stops for the walker. Because understanding the influence of the built environment on any behavior is complicated, the safest course is to design places with many attributes, conducive to physical activity. Moreover, they note that in other countries, where the distances are short, uses are mixed, and the transportation system is "multimodal;" walking and cycling are important forms of urban transportation. Ethical and public health questions arise when design, land use and transportation systems are at the service of the motorist. Transportation design and land use should be built to serve the needs of everyone and to promote public health through walking and cycling.

In the next three chapters the authors describe the relationship of transportation, land use and design to physical activity and public health. A transportation network high in connectivity, i.e., with many blocks and intersections, encourages walking, minimizing as it does the difference between the "crow fly" distances and ground distance. Thus, a modified grid is the preferred street network. The grid is contrasted with the "hierarchical" type planned to accommodate the automobile. At the top of the hierarchical pattern is the arterial road for traffic and at the bottom is the local residential street. These latter streets are often arranged in loops joined at a single point to the major traffic artery. This system isolates, almost privatizes, the residential area, increasing trip lengths and limiting route choices.

As early as 1936, the Federal Housing Administration recommended the hierarchical pattern of subdivision design. The authors point out that in each successive decade planners and developers have greatly increased the level of hierarchy.

Travel facilities designed especially for walkers and cyclists now are being developed in many areas. In the 1990's ISTEA provided considerable funding for bicycle and pedestrian pathways. Most off-street trails, however, are recreational and so are impractical for real intraurban transportation. For this reason, critics argue that the streets themselves must be made bicycle and walker friendly. Public transit lines are ideally suited for walkers but only in districts which have high trip and high population densities. This is the central idea behind the concept of "transit-oriented development" (TOD). As defined by Peter Calthorpe in The Next American Metropolis, TOD is simple: "moderate and high-density housing, along with complementary public uses, jobs, retail and services, are concentrated in mixed-use developments at strategic points along the regional transit system." Concluding the Transportation Chapter is a plea for intermodal design: seamless routes between airports, trains, bus stations, and transit stops. These integrated systems give the traveler a real alternative to using the automobile.

"Land Use Patterns" (Chapter Eight) discusses various types of development and their effects on walking and bicycling. Density, both of "trip-ends" (the beginning and end point of trips) and of population, are conducive to non-motor travel, as are the mixing of uses in the development. Another important standard is how various uses are mixed together and the size and shape of buildings which support the various uses.

A study of national travel and land use data (Dunphy and Fisher 1994) concludes that density and mixed-use influences on people's travel modes are modest except at the highest levels, at which point the number of trips by transit and by foot and bicycle rise dramatically. Research is difficult, as most studies do not cover the smaller geographic scale at which most non-motorized travel takes place. Nevertheless, it is known that low- density, single-use development makes walking and bicycling insignificant elements in the overall transportation mix.

"Urban Design Characteristics" (Chapter Nine) stresses the idea that streets should serve purposes other than the fast, unimpeded flow of motorized traffic. The authors describe design and traffic calming techniques which have success in Europe and in some American cities. Emphasis is also put on the sort of streetscape which influences a person's decision to walk: size and facades of buildings adjacent to the walkway are particularly important. To get funding, however, developers must often conform to specifications that are not pedestrian friendly.

The authors cite the Parsons Brinkerhoff study conducted in Portland, Oregon. It lists four Pedestrian Environment Factors (PEF): ease of street crossings, sidewalk continuity, street network characteristics, and topography. The study found that persons in traffic zones scoring high in these factors take more walking and bicycling trips and fewer auto trips.

The authors point out that many more studies must be done to develop traffic standards and design practices for the non-motorists. In Atlanta they found lower rates of obesity in pedestrians from transit friendly areas. These facts support the link between higher residential density and a reduced likelihood of obesity.

Chapter Eleven presents the conclusion: Public policies framed by AASHTO, the FHA, and local governments, and banks have too often promoted the sprawling, horizontal, auto-dependent communities we live in. Public dollars funneled into highways have marginalized transit, walking and bicycling, with serious consequences for public health. Fortunately, starting with ISTEA and TEA21, public transportation policy is changing for the better. The key challenge, the authors conclude, is to harmonize transportation investments with public health and land development policies.

This excellent study is well-indexed, has extensive notes for each chapters and a 19 page bibliography.

Both of these books argue convincingly for the necessity of modifying our auto-dependent transportation system. They advocate funding for multiple modes of transportation and varied types of land use. They have broadened the policy sphere to include the needs and health of all the citizens.

One minor weakness of both books is that neither delves deeply into the economic and political institutions that have created and supported such an auto-dependent transportation system which can be injurious to our physical, mental and societal health. An example of such a study is Howard R. Ernest's book, Chesapeake Bay Blues: Science, Politics, and the Struggle to Save the Bay (2003). It discusses the power plays between developers, politicians, planners, voters and their advocacy groups. The authors also may have placed too much faith in "smart growth" strategies for solving these problems.

A very minor weakness of both books is that they do not seem to be familiar with all the practical problems of walkers and transit users. For example, pedestrians and transit users need extra clothing racks at the work place for their all-weather gear; the bicyclists need secure areas for their bicycles at their place of work.

Both Urban Sprawl and Public Health and Health and Community Design deserve a careful reading and a prominent place on the bookshelves of public health officers and transportation and land use planners. These books promote the pedestrian, the transit user, and the bicyclists as major stakeholders for planners and designers to serve. This approach could create a healthy environment in our cities and suburbs and could turn unhealthy urban-sprawl-type economic growth into healthy sustainable economic development.

Dr. John W. Baer is an economist who has worked as a traffic analyst for the National Security Agency and the Milwaukee Railroad. Mary B. Baer, his wife, is a research librarian. Both are habitual walkers and transit users.

Purchase the "Urban Sprawl and Public Health: Designing, Planning, and Building for Healthy Communities" book online using the link below and a percentage of the sale is contributed to TRF.

Purchase the "Health and Community Design: The Impact of the Built Environment on Physical Activity" book online using the link below and a percentage of the sale is contributed to TRF.

Top	< Prev | TOC