Planning for Good Health

With our nation’s most common epidemics reaching unprecedented numbers throughout suburban American, the public health community has begun to look at city planning as a quantifiable variable in measuring health.

In the Sacramento Valley, a region plagued by sprawling growth and worsening air quality, city planners and public health officials are starting to coordinate their efforts. The ongoing debate between politicians, homeowners, developers and planners has left a number of unanswered questions: Can smart growth truly prevent ill-health? Whose responsibility is it to provide a healthier living environment? And will the new science linking sprawl and health problems catalyze improvements in the way Sacramento grows?

"In essence, public health is about making healthy living easy. Prevention, the heart of public health, is best accomplished when it is passive. For example, fluoridation of the water supply as a method of preventing cavities is a public health intervention built into the infrastructure of our daily lives. It requires almost no public effort or education and thereby makes being healthy easy. Developing cities that are by design healthier could be a similarly important public health development. By designing cities that are walkable, with safe pedestrian corridors and centralized multi-use developments, we design cities that promote resident activity and thus lead to less obesity. By designing cities with better mass transit and bicycle lanes, we design cities with less air pollution and incidence of asthma."