Kaid Benfield

Design for Health site

Director, Sustainable Commuities and Smart Growth, NRDC; co-founder, LEED for Neighborhood Development rating system, Nov 29, 10.

Tagged with neighborhoods, community, health, planning

Kaid Benfield comments on the Design for Health website:

...Beyond transportation, there definitely isn’t much if any attention paid in the environmental community to the effect of other aspects of community form and design on health. But that’s on us, not on other public health advocates, who are indeed showing leadership on the issue.

I just came across one terrific-looking set of resources, for example, called Design for Health. According to the web site, Design for Health and its online presence compose “a program that helps create and synthesize the evidence base linking landscape, urban design, planning, and health.” It is substantial.

The first phase of Design for Health was focused on planning in the Twin Cities region, where $25 million was provided by the last federal transportation law to develop and improve infrastructure for active living and active transportation, and where comprehensive plans for 19 municipalities were due for updates in 2008.

The Twin Cities project resulted in an extensive set of core resources on such issues as air quality, access to food and health care, mental health, noise, physical activity, social capital, water quality, and special populations, with research summaries, tools, and links to a wealth of data and information. One of the resources that I found particularly interesting was a set of checklists designed to assist the integration of health concerns into planning for land use, transportation, water, parks and open space, redevelopment, and economic development.

Among the questions:

* Has a community food security assessment been created to [identify] barriers to healthy food, income levels, lost farmland, community gardens and farmer’s market availability within urbanized areas?
* Are there appropriate ordinances or policies used for mixed-use design of neighborhood, village, town, and city centers?
* Are there policies or incentives to encourage the redevelopment of brownfield sites?
* Does planning policy for redevelopment include evaluation of lead-bearing substances in exposed surfaces of dwelling units, child care facilities, schools, or recreation facilities used by children?
* Are all residential areas planned for an average of 4 (preferably 7) units per gross acre?
* Is a tree canopy provided in parks, open space, and streetscapes to establish a 50% to 100% canopy coverage in the redevelopment area?
* Are there policies that require that all developments have views of greenery for mental health benefits?
* Are there development and landscape design standards for water (i.e. green roofs, encouraging rain gardens, buffer thresholds, ordinances for pervious pavement)?
* Are there existing or planned vegetated buffers along all water bodies (preferably 20m to 50m) to prevent non-point pollution from impervious surfaces?
* Do the pedestrian overlay zones include policies that encourage walking and bicycling through streetscape amenities such as benches, trash receptacles, planters, pole lights, kiosks, telephones, newsstands, drinking fountains and bike racks?
* Are there urban design guidelines that relate to sidewalk width and materials, lighting, signage, landscaping, way finding, crosswalks, curb ramps, refuge islands, corner radii, and signals?
* Is regular transit service planned for all residential and employment areas (preferably within 1200m of all residential areas)?
* Are there plans or policies to provide adequate street lighting along all major streets?
* Are there a variety of nearby destinations for residents (e.g., employment, health care, grocery stores, etc.) and can these destinations be reached by a variety of transportation modes (e.g., bicycling, walking, automobile, transit)?

There are eleven pages of questions in various categories and rank of importance, and they are all good ones. (That said, I would strongly urge that the Design for Health team spend some time proofreading and copy editing. There are a lot of errors that distract the reader.)

In addition to these very good resources, Design for Health provides tools for health impact assessment, conducts training workshops, and is available for direct technical assistance. There is also an interesting-looking blog called Healthy Metropolis that is maintained by Ann Forsyth, the professor of city and regional planning at Cornell University who initiated Design for Health. Forsyth has partnered in the project with Kevin Krizek of the University of Colorado and Carissa Schively Slotterback of the Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota. The webmaster is Joanne Richardson.

I’m impressed with their work so far.