The influence of the built environment on transport and health

Abstract

There is a growing understanding within public health, transportation engineering, and urban planning of the mechanisms by which features of the built, natural, and social environments impact physical and mental health. The World Health Organization and the U.S. Surgeon General recently announced calls to action to create and implement strategies to reduce adverse health impacts of auto dependent environments and to foster increased supply of health promoting environments for healthy aging (HHS, 2015 ; WHO, 2016). A special issue of the Lancet on Urban design, transport and health was just released focusing on ways the built environment impacts public health ( Giles-Corti et al., 2016; Sallis et al., 2016 ; Stevenson et al., 2016). Evidence being published within the academic literature on transportation and health is finding many applications to real world decisions. Policy makers and planners are applying evidence through decision-support scenario planning tools predicting health outcomes associated with contrasting transportation and land use actions ( Frank et al., 2015; Frank et al., 2017 ; SCAG, 2016)... Language: en