John Hennessy III,
P.E.
REGIONAL PLAN ASSOCIATION
This report seeks to add to our understanding of the health impacts of long term urban planning decisions. How do planning decisions such as investment in a subway line, the creation of a park or the redevelopment of a neighborhood affect health outcomes decades later? To answer that question we need to look at not only how individual localities work alone, but how clusters of cities, towns and villages work together.
AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR MICROBIOLOGY
In conjunction with other published investigations, this work helps to characterize the “urban microbiome” and, in doing so, adds to our understanding of how these microbial communities are formed, maintained, and transferred. Such studies fall in a critical space between the categories of environmental and human-associated microbial ecology and as such must address the challenges of both. Improved approaches to such studies should include designing studies with rich metadata, including architectural features, human contact, environmental exposure, surface type, and surface material; accounting for a wide range of potential biochemical environments, contaminants, and biomass levels; and involving institutional review boards, city officials, and engineers as appropriate.
TRANSPORTATION FOR AMERICA
Cities and regions around the country face important choices about how and where they want to grow, how to connect people to economic prosperity and how to use limited resources to promote healthy communities and provide a great quality of life for all of their residents.
AMERICAN LUNG ASSOCIATION
The “State of the Air 2016” found continued improvement in air quality in 2012–2014, showing lower levels of year-round particle pollution and ozone. Still, more than half of all Americans—166 million people—live in counties where they are exposed to unhealthful levels of these pollutants.
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
To promote walking, community strategies can be implemented where people live, learn, work, and play. Places for walking can be designed and enhanced to improve their walkability. Improving walkability means that communities are created or enhanced to make it safe and easy to walk and that pedestrian activity is encouraged for all people.11 Improving the walkability of communities can benefit people of all abilities, including those who run, bike, skate, or use wheelchairs.
HARVARD SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH: CENTER FOR HEALTH AND THE GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL & ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING
BOSTON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released the nation’s first-ever carbon pollution standards for existing power plants on June 2, 2014. The EPA-proposed Clean Power Plan would achieve a 30% reduction in carbon emissions from U.S. power plants below 2005 levels by 2030 (USEPA 2014a). Carbon dioxide (CO2) is an important greenhouse gas and a major driver of human-induced global climate change. Fossil-fuel-fired power plants are the single largest source of anthropogenic CO2 emissions in the U.S. They emitted 2.2 billion tons of CO2 in 2012 (AOE 2014) and currently account for 39 percent of total U.S. CO2 emissions (USEPA 2014b).
TRANSFORM
While transportation planning has long centered around the concept of “mobility” (moving people from place to place), recent focus has begun shifting to “access,” or ensuring that people can easily reach jobs, education, and other daily needs. Transportation planners design our streets and sidewalks, highways, and public transit networks. Agency decisions are made at all levels, from the city to the federal government.
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According to Slate, “Much of the public health debate over rising obesity rates has turned to these “food deserts,” where convenience store fare is more accessible—and more expensive—than healthier options farther away…” A comment sums up the issue: “As our population ages, more and more will have to move out of rural areas into urban centers where services and basic necessities can be reached via public transportation. I wish our government and local planners had the wisdom to anticipate such problems”
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HARVARD CENTER FOR RISK ANALYSIS
Traffic congestion is a significant issue in virtually every urban area in the United States and around the world. Anyone who spends any time commuting knows that the time and fuel wasted while sitting in traffic can not only be annoying, but can lead to real economic costs. An examination of the peer-reviewed literature shows that there are many previous analyses that estimate the economic costs of congestion based on fuel and time wasted, but that these studies don’t include the costs of the potential public health impacts. Sitting in traffic leads to higher tailpipe emissions which everyone is exposed to, and the economic costs of those exposures have not been explored.
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