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. 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. My main contributions have been in two areas. First, is analyzing the actual and potential success of planned alternatives to sprawl, such as new towns. Several topics prove to be challenging to deal with in such models including designing the overall layout, balancing higher densities and open space, enabling cultural and aesthetic diversity, and promoting alternatives to the car. Second, has been an interest in health and place—examining both physical and social dimensions—covering a number of topics similar to those dealt with in my work on planned communities. I have conducted several studies of physical activity and food environments. I have also translated more general research on health and place into tools and guidelines for practice. In addition, I have been a reflective practitioner, focusing on social and intellectual diversity in planning and design. 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
• Reflections

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. These developments used many of the techniques currently evident in smart growth and new urbanist developments. 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 examined 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 2012 I am working on a project on global suburbs and the transition century. 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 Twin Cities Walking Study, TREC-IDEA, ECHO, and EAT-III projects). In addition I have done work drawing out the practice implications of research on a range of connections between health and environments from social networks to air quality (for example the Design for Health project). The big idea behind this work is that there are many connections between health and place and that the recent focus on food and physical activity, while useful, is too narrow. This latter work 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 2012 I am working on several projects connecting the built environment and health. A blog called Healthy Metropolis focuses on practical applications http://healthymetropolis.blogspot.com/. In addition, suburban areas have received much criticism on health grounds but is this accurate? A project on health and metropolitan areas is assessing the evidence across multiple health outcomes--from well-being to disease and death. It is also exploring the tools that planners and designers can use to make places healthier.

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), a survey of walking and cycling, and award-winning participatory planning techniques (Minnesota Block Exercise/Corridor Housing Initiative, YouthPower Guide). I have also tested several tools for reliability and validity.

• Through 2012 I am working to refine and test some of these tools.

Reflections

As a reflective practitioner I have also stepped back, writing articles dealing with some broader questions related to the practice of planning, design, and research. For example, I have authored or co-authored articles defining the range of practice approaches used in landscape architecture, community design center structures, reflecting on women and the architectural star system, and articulating a typology of 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 (1995-2000), 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. Projects and programs where I had a major role won nine awards.
• 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. Projects and activities where I had a major role won 11 awards and commendations.
• In 2004 I started developing a project that eventually became Design for Health. The middle phases of this project involved collaborations with Kevin Krizek (University of Colorado) and Carissa Schively Slotterback (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. The project and related outputs have won four awards. I also do other independent work related to health and planning and maintain the Healthy Metropolis Blog at http://healthymetropolis.blogspot.com/.