The Built Environment And Public Health

THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC HEALTH The Built Environment and Public Health explores the impact on our health of the environments we build for ourselves, and how public health and urban planning can work together to build settings that promote healthy living. This comprehensive text covers origins and foundations of the built environment as a public health focus and its joint history with urban planning, transportation and land use, infrastructure and natural disasters, assessment tools, indoor air quality, water quality, food security, health disparities, mental health, social capital, and environmental justice. The Built Environment and Public Health explores such timely issues as Basics of the built environment and evidence for its influences How urban planning and public health intersect How infrastructure improvements can address chronic diseases and conditions Meeting the challenges of natural disasters Policies to promote walking and mass transit Approaches to assess and improve air quality and our water supply Policies that improve food security and change how Americans get their food How the built environment can address needs of vulnerable populations Evidence-based design practices for hospitals and health care facilities Mental health, stressors, and health care environments Theories and programs to improve social capital of low-income communities How the built environment addresses issues of health equity and environmental justice This important textbook and resource includes chapter learning objectives, summaries, questions for discussion, and listings of key terms. Companion Web site: www.josseybass.com/go/lopez

Based on worldwide public health data, this report lays out the premise for building healthy places and illuminates the role of the real estate and development community in addressing public health issues. This is an essential resource for public officials, real estate developers, engineers, consultants, and students of urban planning.

This concise volume analyzes the potential for the workplace environment—where so many people spend so much of their day—to improve workers’ capacity for health and wellness. It pinpoints the link between sedentary lifestyles and poor health, and explores the role of office spatial design in encouraging physical activity to promote physical activity, health and prevent disease. The featured research study tracks workers’ movement in a variety of office layouts, addressing possible ways movement-friendly design can co-exist with wireless communication, paperless offices, and new corporate concepts of productivity. From these findings, the author’s conclusions extend public health concepts to recognize that influencing population-wide levels of activity through office architectural design alone may be possible. This SpringerBrief is comprised of chapters on : Physical activity and disease: Theory and practice Space-use and the history of the office building Identifying factors of the office architectural design that influence movement, Interdisciplinary research methods in studying worker physical activity, decision-making and office design characteristics The KINESIS model for simulating physical activity in office environments The questions and potential for solutions in Workplace Environmental Design in Architecture for Public Health will interest and inform researchers in interdisciplinary topics of public health and architecture as well as graduate and post-graduate students, architects, economists, managers, businesses as well as health-conscious readers.

Health and Community Design is a comprehensive examination of how the built environment encourages or discourages physical activity, drawing together insights from a range of research on the relationships between urban form and public health. It provides important information about the factors that influence decisions about physical activity and modes of travel, and about how land use patterns can be changed to help overcome barriers to physical activity. Chapters examine: • the historical relationship between health and urban form in the United States • why urban and suburban development should be designed to promote moderate types of physical activity • the divergent needs and requirements of different groups of people and the role of those needs in setting policy • how different settings make it easier or more difficult to incorporate walking and bicycling into everyday activities A concluding chapter reviews the arguments presented and sketches a research agenda for the future.

The environment that we construct affects both humans and our natural world in myriad ways. There is a pressing need to create healthy places and to reduce the health threats inherent in places already built. However, there has been little awareness of the adverse effects of what we have constructed-or the positive benefits of well designed built environments. This book provides a far-reaching follow-up to the pathbreaking Urban Sprawl and Public Health, published in 2004. That book sparked a range of inquiries into the connections between constructed environments, particularly cities and suburbs, and the health of residents, especially humans. Since then, numerous studies have extended and refined the book's research and reporting. Making Healthy Places offers a fresh and comprehensive look at this vital subject today. There is no other book with the depth, breadth, vision, and accessibility that this book offers. In addition to being of particular interest to undergraduate and graduate students in public health and urban planning, it will be essential reading for public health officials, planners, architects, landscape architects, environmentalists, and all those who care about the design of their communities. Like a well-trained doctor, Making Healthy Places presents a diagnosis of--and offers treatment for--problems related to the built environment. Drawing on the latest scientific evidence, with contributions from experts in a range of fields, it imparts a wealth of practical information, with an emphasis on demonstrated and promising solutions to commonly occurring problems.

Mounting scientific evidence generated over the past decade highlights the significant role of our citiesê built environments in shaping our health and well-being. In this book, the authors conceptualize the •urban health nicheê as a novel approach to

The Built Environment and Public Health By Russell P. Lopez