City Planning and Population Health: A Global Challenge

Significant global health challenges are being confronted in the 21st century, prompting calls to rethink approaches to disease prevention. A key part of the solution is city planning that reduces non-communicable diseases and road trauma while also managing rapid urbanization. This series of papers considers the health impacts of city planning through transport mode choices. In this, the first paper, the authors identify eight integrated regional and local interventions that, when combined, encourage walking, cycling, and public transport use, while reducing private motor vehicle use. These interventions are destination accessibility, equitable distribution of employment across cities, managing demand by reducing the availability and increasing the cost of parking, designing pedestrian-friendly and cycling-friendly movement networks, achieving optimum levels of residential density, reducing distance to public transport, and enhancing the desirability of active travel modes (e.g., creating safe attractive neighborhoods and safe, affordable, and convenient public transport). Together, these interventions will create healthier and more sustainable compact cities that reduce the environmental, social, and behavioral risk factors that affect lifestyle choices, levels of traffic, environmental pollution, noise, and crime. The health sector, including health ministers, must lead in advocating for integrated multisector city planning that prioritizes health, sustainability, and livability outcomes, particularly in rapidly changing low-income and middle-income countries. The authors recommend establishing a set of indicators to benchmark and monitor progress towards achievement of more compact cities that promote health and reduce health inequities.

• Record URL:
  https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(16)30066-6
• Record URL:
  http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673616300666
• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/issn/01406736
• Supplemental Notes:
  • Abstract reprinted with permission of Elsevier.
• Authors:
  • Giles-Corti, Billie
  • Vernez-Moudon, Anne
  • Reis, Rodrigo
  • Turrell, Gavin
  • Dannenberg, Andrew L
  • Badland, Hannah
  • Foster, Sarah
  • Lowe, Melanie
  • Sallis, James F
  • Stevenson, Mark
  • Owen, Neville
• Publication Date: 2016-12

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Web
• Features: References;
• Pagination: pp 2912-2924
• Serial:
  • The Lancet
  • Volume: 388
  • Issue Number: 10062
  • Publisher: Elsevier
  • ISSN: 0140-6736
  • Serial URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01406736

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Bicycling; City planning; Mode choice; Public health; Public transit; Socioeconomic factors; Sustainable development; Travel behavior; Walkability
• Subject Areas: Pedestrians and Bicyclists; Planning and Forecasting; Society; Transportation (General);

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01619984
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Dec 28 2016 8:50AM