Sidebar: The Blue Ridge Corridor Experience

Abstract

ncmedicaljournal.com 291 efficient, more livable, more attractive, and less chaotic. The planning conferences held in 1909 and 1910 were both called the National Conference on City Planning and the Problems of Congestion. But by 1911, Olmstead had persuaded the planning association to drop the phrase “the Problems of Congestion” from the name of the conference. Olmstead wanted to develop city planning as a field of physical planning and knowledge. Unlike Marsh, he was not interested in mounting a national campaign for social reform [3]. So city planners took their leave of social reformers and public health advocates and went in a different direction. In 1917, the American City Planning Institute was formed as a professional society [4]. The history and purpose of planning and public health are clearly intertwined. In the early 20th century, policymakers also recognized this interconnectedness. Congress passed the standard state enabling acts for zoning and planning in the 1920s [5]. Section 1 of the zoning legislation states that the act is for regulating land use “for the purpose of promoting health, safety, morals, or the general welfare of the community...” [6] Then and today, any local government with a zoning code has language in it that ties zoning to public health. Although, public health is one of the pillars of zoning, it had lost its connection with the planning profession until recently. Planning and public health, which had once had much in common, became very specialized and separate fields in the 20th century. The 2 professions are once again joining forces to tackle a common problem: the public health consequences due to suburbanization.