Urban Sprawl and Public Health: Designing, Planning, and Building for Healthy Communities - Hardcover

"A growing body of research demonstrates that community design and our built environment have enormous potential for addressing many of our chief public health concerns. The authors convincingly argue that building a healthier future is not only possible, but essential."--Georges C. Benjamin, MD, FACP, executive director, APHA "No one chooses to be obese, in poor health, or stuck in traffic. Frumkin, Jackson, and Frank make the compelling point that unless Americans are given more choice in where and how they live and travel, all of us will bear the burden, not just in terms of extra pounds, but also in terms of lower quality of life, higher health care costs, reduced life expectancy, and greater isolation, especially at the vulnerable beginning and end of our lives. I hope every elected and appointed official in the U.S. reads this book and then acts on it to avert the economic and health crisis that is fast headed our way."--Governor Parris N. Glendening, President, Smart Growth Leadership Institute "Frumkin, Frank and Jackson acknowledge that sprawl does not fully explain our American lifestyle, but they present some pretty convincing evidence for changing the way we live."--Sunday Press-Register, Mobile AL "Urban Sprawl and Public Health is written for urban planners, public health practitioners, and the general public....Overall, the authors provide a well-informed discussion on urban planning and health issues and present feasible public health solutions that may be incorporated into many urban development projects."--Canadian Journal of Urban Research "Suburban sprawl is killing us. Increasingly, physicians, public health officials, planners, and designers recognize the relationships between our health and our built surroundings. Urban Sprawl and Public Health offers a cogent diagnosis of this health menace as well as timely prescriptions for healing our cities."--Frederick Steiner, Dean, School of Architecture, University of Texas at Austin "Years ago, we could see that the correlation between sprawl and poor health should be made. Now it is done. Urban Sprawl and Public Health details how our lifestyle leads to serious health problems. This book should be reviewed widely and its facts should be known by all of us. It will be one of the central texts of the New Urbanism."--Andres Duany, author of "Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream"

Howard Frumkin is Associate Professor and Chair in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health. He is an internist, epidemiologist, and environmental and occupational medicine specialist. He received his MD from the University of Pennsylvania and his Masters and Doctoral degrees in Public Health from Harvard. Larry Frank is Bombadier Chair in Sustainable Transportation Systems at the School of Community and Regional Planning at the University of British Columbia. He recently left the Georgia Institute of Technology where he was an assistant professor in the City Planning Program. He is a registered landscape architect and holds a master in Civil Engineering Transportation Planning and a Ph.D. in Urban Design and Planning from the University of Washington. Richard Jackson is Director of the National Center for Environmental Health at the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta. He is also Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Rollins School of Public Health. He is a MD and holds a Masters in Public Health.