Bill Would Investigate “Built Environment’s” Impact on Children’s Health

The Healthy Places Act of 2006 would help state and local governments conduct Health Impact Assessments -- voluntary studies that would help assess the effect of major policies on community health, according to the American Public Health Association. In addition, a new interagency working group would help various federal agencies coordinate efforts on environmental health issues.

The measure was introduced by U.S. Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and Congresswoman Hilda Solis of California.

A grant program would help local governments deal with environmental health hazards. And, "additional support for research on the relationship between the built environment and health, as recommended by two Institute of Medicine reports," APHA notes.

“Healthy communities for children are on the verge of being engineered out of existence, and we must take action to change these harmful built environments to ensure the well-being of our nation’s kids,” said APHA executive director Georges C. Benjamin, MD in a statement.

Without question, it's tougher to raise healthy kids if they can't spontaneously go out to play, if they don't get used to walking places and if they don't have safe and attractive outdoor spaces.
"Today’s cities ... coddle the automobile while denying children the opportunity to experience the wonder and joy of the natural world," according to Dr. Richard Joseph Jackson, director of the National Center for Environmental Health, and Dr. Susan Kay Cummins, the Center's senior health policy advisor, as reported by the Environment News Service. "What child can be allowed independent exploration in cities experienced as dangerous and lacking parks and sidewalks?"

The Loss of Streets As Neighborhoods

Ecology Action Centre's Maggy Burns decries the dramatic change in our view of public roads "away from seeing streets as neighbourhoods and towards seeing them as thoroughfares," she writes in the Chronicle Herald -- "the shift away from seeing our streets as part of our community. The kind of community where sidewalk cafes coexist with grandmothers walking, who coexist with cars and with children playing."


It's an interesting point, because all too rarely do we see, hear or read anything about roadway planning besides funneling traffic. Oh, sidewalks might be installed, but nobody thinks about whether there's a walker friendly streetscape, with things like proper landscaping buffers between the sidewalks and whizzing traffic, or buildings sited to encourage pedestrian streetlife, or realistic ways of crossing roads with any serious vehicle traffic.

"A collection of values gets lost when streets become simply a means of getting from one place to another as quickly as possible," she says. "We lose the right to play in public spaces; we lose the sense of community that comes from stopping for a chat with a neighbour while walking the dog or biking to work; we even lose the economic benefits of shopping at local stores where our money stays in the community."

Make no mistake: The thriving local business districts of the early 21st century will be those that create an attractive, appealing pedestrian environment -- good mix of retail and residential along with great streetscapes.

Atlanta Mulls Ways to Make ‘Peachtree Corridor’ World Class; Any Local Lessons?

"Some of Atlanta's top business executives and community leaders have been tapped to help retool the city's signature Peachtree corridor," the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. "The group's mission is to help turn the Peachtree corridor into a world-class thoroughfare, with a unified pedestrian-friendly design that may include streetcars rolling down the spine."

The group is headed by two developers, who believe that parts of the district "lack density and urban sophistication, making the stretch pale in comparison to major thoroughfares in other cities."

This is an important point. Even though the neighborhood already boasts "some of the city's poshest homes, fanciest restaurants and hottest boutiques," the article notes, creating an overall experience is critical. The presence of nice homes, eateries and stores isn't enough; you've got to tie it all together in a way that makes an appealing, coherent and unbroken streetscape.

In other words, even if you add new residences and businesses as part of downtown revitalization, it's not enough as long as you also, say, still have a suburban-sprawl-designed wholesale business across from your transit station, or a stand-alone appliance store set way back from the roadway. Now there's absolutely nothing wrong with a wholesale plumbing business or an appliance store! I've gone to both myself, and they are fine enterprises with a lot of good merchandise. But the way they're designed creates big holes in the streetscape in the critical zone around the T station, if your goal is to entice people using the trains to stay and experience the business district. Those same stores sited up at the sidewalk with attractive window displays for retail passers-by would make a major difference.

The Atlanta group will "look at everything from landscaping and lighting to sidewalks and street-level retail," according to the newspaper report.

Framingham Election Results

Planning Board, incumbents Carol Spack and Tom Mahoney retained their seats yesterday, defeating challenger Stephen Meltzer in a three-way race for two seats. Both Spack and Mahoney responded favorably to the importance of pedestrian issues when asked about them at a candidates night event last month, which was good news.

While I was pleased with the outcome of yesterday's Planning Board election, it's still unclear to me how important the board as a whole views creating walker-appealing streetscapes -- not merely installing sidewalks -- compared to the many other demands of development projects. (I'm still disapointed that the board didn't try to get the new Lowe's to be sited up at the sidewalk, which could have made an attractive walking environment between there and the main post office, instead of allowing yet another surburban-sprawl entry along Rte. 30.)

In other races ...

Miami/Dade Residents Yearn For More Walkable Communities

"Imagine a world where big-box retail stores don't take up entire city blocks, rather they meld into town squares alongside buildings sporting old-country facades. Picture tree-lined, walkable streets, surrounding a bustling urban center, where residences, nightlife and commerce converge, like metropolises of yore," begins an article in the Miami Herald. Well, "that's what a group of Northwest Miami-Dade residents see for their corner of the county when they look toward the future."

How surprising that people prefer tree-lined, walker-appealing streets for their retail centers instead of an ugly series of strip malls designed solely for the automobile. Not.

'We see developers coming in every day that want to build exactly what the residents have planned,'' Shailendra Singh, urban design director for the county's department of planning and zoning, told the Herald. "This is the way to go."

In fact, "three areas -- Naranja, Princeton and Goulds -- that have had their own charrettes and code guidelines approved, are already seeing their visions put into action."

What about here? Will we ever get a vision like that for the Golden Triangle along Route 9? Will downtown Framingham ever become a pedestrian-appealing center with a truly compelling streetscape filled with people?