Health, food systems, parks, and regional planning

Learning objectives

• Explain how the built environment affects health and walk through the steps of a health impact assessment.
• Describe the food system, define food deserts, and identify planning tools for food access.
• Classify parks and measure park access with both acreage and walk-access standards, and use joint use agreements to add park space.
• Plan for residents of all ages, including aging in place, universal design, and visitability.
• Describe regional and multijurisdictional planning bodies and tools.
• Identify the privacy and equity questions raised by smart-city data.

Key concepts

Planning and public health

Modern planning began as a public health reform (see A history of American planning), and the two fields are reconnecting. Health outcomes are shaped by social determinants of health, the conditions where people live, work, learn, and play. The federal Healthy People 2030 framework sorts them into five domains: economic stability, education access and quality, health care access and quality, neighborhood and built environment, and social and community context. The built environment domain is the planner's home ground, and the others touch housing, jobs, and transit too. Many determinants are planning topics:

• Active living: walkable streets, bike networks, and nearby parks encourage physical activity.
• Air quality: proximity to highways and industry affects asthma and heart disease.
• Safety: traffic design (see Transportation planning) and safe public spaces.
• Healthy housing: condition, affordability, overcrowding, and stability.
• Food access: where healthy, affordable food is available.
• Heat: tree canopy and paving affect urban heat islands, a growing health threat.

Typical public health topics in a comprehensive plan include active transportation, food access, air quality, housing quality, and access to parks and health care. Newer plans often give health its own element, and APA's Sustaining Places standards for comprehensive plans name a Healthy Community as one of their principles (see Comprehensive plans). A Health in All Policies approach goes further, asking every department, from public works to housing, to consider health effects in its decisions.

6 more sections follow in the full lesson.