Research | Practice

Research

My key interest is in how to create better urban or metropolitan areas. In my professional work as a planner and urban designer, and in my research, I have come at this problem in several ways—studying places, developing tools, and reflecting on practices.

Healthy Places and Planned Communities

Big Picture: My work focuses on the social aspects of physical planning, urban design, and urban development. The big issue behind this research and practice is how to make more sustainable and healthy cities and the site of most of that research has been in suburbs. My main activity has been to analyze the actual and potential success of planned alternatives to sprawl. To do this I have investigated large-scale model communities (e.g. new towns), particularly those in suburbs, and also examined specific topics that prove to be the most challenging to deal with in such models. These include overall suburban design (aesthetics, sense of place), walkability, and other aspects of healthy places (social diversity, housing, green space, food). I have also been a reflective practitioner. To find out more about my research see the links below, read my publications, or look at the project descriptions on my Design for Health web site.

• Suburbs
• Healthy environments
• New tools
• Practice and Reflection

Suburbs: My first book on suburbs, Constructing Suburbs (1999, Routledge/Gordon and Breach), looked at competing approaches evident in planning for suburban development in Australia in the 1990s. Its focus was on how issues of sustainability and urban growth were articulated and how tradeoffs were made about social and ecological goals. My next book, Reforming Suburbia (2005, University of California), used multiple methods to reassess three of the largest and most successful of the U.S new towns (“planned communities”) of the 1960s and 1970s planned as intentional alternatives to problems urban sprawl--social, aesthetic, economic, and environmental. Designing Small Parks (2005, Wiley, with Laura Musacchio), explored the tensions between designing open spaces for social and ecological goals, focusing on small sites where these tensions are most difficult to resolve. A series of recent articles on planned communities, co-authored with Katherine Crewe, have explored aesthetic, environmental, and social issues in a set of 20 such developments in the US, Europe, Japan, and Australia, built from the 1950s through the 2000s. The articles draw lessons about the success of model communities in providing a real alternative to current development practices; the articles also compare different urban planning and urban design philosophies.

• Through 2011 I am working on a project on suburbs in global perspective. As the world's population increases by some billions in the coming century, much of that growth will be housed in suburban areas. This makes global suburbs a key site for engaging with issues of sustainable and healthy cities.

Healthy Environments: Other research has looked in more depth aspects of healthy environments with more technical projects examining physical activity and food access (funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and National Institutes of Health including the Cities Walking Study, TREC-IDEA, ECHO, and EAT-III projects). In addition I have done work translating research on a range of connections between health and environments from social connections to air quality (for example the Design for Health project). This latter work has been oriented toward more directly affecting practice and has won national awards from the American Planning Association and the Environmental Design Research Association. Much of this work has been located in suburban sites or involved work with suburban municipalities. Many of my health related projects are outlined on the web site of Design for Health.

• Through 2011 I am working on several projects connecting the built environment and health. In addition, suburban areas have received much criticism on health grounds but is this accurate? A larger project on healthy suburbs will assess the evidence.

New Tools

To undertake this research and practice I have collaborated in creating a number of new tools and methods—an urban design inventory (the Irvine Minnesota Inventory), GIS protocols for measuring food and physical activity environments, planning-oriented health impact assessments (the Design for Health suite), and award-winning participatory planning techniques (Minnesota Block Exercise/Corridor Housing Initiative, YouthPower Guide).

• Through 2011 I am working to refine some of these tools, am part of a team developing a registry of research measurement tools for the National Collaborative on Childhood Obesity Research, and am helping develop a new survey tool and sampling strategy so that local governments can more easily assess walking and cycling.
  

Practice and Reflection

As a reflective practitioner I have also stepped back, writing articles dealing with some broader questions the practice of planning, design, and research, for example defining the range of approaches used in landscape architecture practice, community design center structures, reflecting on women and the architectural star system, and environmental design research approaches.
These draw on a number of long-running projects that mixed research, practice, and education while also working at the intersection of design and planning.

• From 1993-1999, I taught at University of Massachusetts where I was co-founder and co-director of the Urban Places Project, a collaboration with two landscape architects--Henry Lu and Patricia McGirr. This project worked on urban design and neighborhood planning projects in low-income neighborhoods, emphasizing participatory processes,
• From 2002-2007, I was director of the Metropolitan Design Center at the University of Minnesota and professor of urban design with appointments in both the architecture and landscape architecture departments. This center examined urban design across the metropolitan landscape and doing research, community design, public education, and graduate teaching. It completed 15-25 urban planning and design projects each year.
• From 2008-2009, I was the Ithaca director for a linked set of New York City Programs related to public service, outreach, and urban studies education—including the Cornell Urban Scholars Program.
• Since the mid-2000s, building directly on my earlier work in sustainability and participation, I have conducted a range of work related to health and planning. In 2006, I founded Design for Health that I co-direct with Kevin Krizek of the University of Colorado and Carissa Schively Slotterback of the University of Minnesota. This project has worked to integrate health into urban plans, ordinances, and planning processes. It has provided direct technical assistance and created planning-oriented health impact assessments, research summaries, image collections, planning advice documents, and a web site. I also do other independent work related to health and planning.