CDC: Consider health when planning

Sprawl contributes to ailments

Steve Hawley, May 21, 10.

A recent report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that public health factors should be taken into consideration when developing and redeveloping communities, according to the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU). The report resulted from a national workshop of experts held last year in Atlanta. The workshop included CNU president John Norquist, who spoke as part of Houston Tomorrow’s Distinguished Speaker Series last year.

According to the report, ailments such as obesity, diabetes, and asthma are intricately linked to urban form. Car-dependent sprawl has increased air and water pollution while decreasing physical activity and social interaction.

Richard Jackson, a professor at UCLA’s School of Public Health and a former CDC department chair, said similar things when he spoke at the Distinguished Speaker Series last summer. He said people become overweight from living in cities that are not walkable, and that the problems are especially pronounced in children who have lived their entire lives in these sprawling communities.

The CDC report also notes that the elderly are particularly vulnerable to these design flaws, since they are less mobile and more easily isolated. This leads not only to physical ailments, but also contributes to mental health problems. At a town hall hosted by Houston Tomorrow and the Citizens’ Transportation Coalition last year, Marla Turner, associate state director for AARP Texas, said that the majority of Harris County seniors have to get rides from other people, and that many of them have trouble even getting to their doctor’s appointments or the grocery store. “We’re talking about health care reform,” she said, “and we can’t even get people to their appointments.”

CDC report: Healthy Community Design Expert Workshop Report (pdf, 394 kb)