Synopses & Reviews
Review
"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."
Review
"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."
Review
"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."
Review
"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." Georges C. Benjamin - MD, FACP, executive director, APHA
Synopsis
In Urban Sprawl and Public Health, Howard Frumkin, Lawrence Frank, and Richard Jackson, three of the nation's leading public health and urban planning experts explore an intriguing question: How does the physical environment in which we live affect our health? For decades, growth and development in our communities has been of the low-density, automobile-dependent type known as sprawl. The authors examine the direct and indirect impacts of sprawl on human health and well-being, and discuss the prospects for improving public health through alternative approaches to design, land use, and transportation.
Urban Sprawl and Public Health offers a comprehensive look at the interface of urban planning, architecture, transportation, community design, and public health. It summarizes the evidence linking adverse health outcomes with sprawling development, and outlines the complex challenges of developing policy that promotes and protects public health. Anyone concerned with issues of public health, urban planning, transportation, architecture, or the environment will want to read Urban Sprawl and Public Health.
About the Author
Howard Frumkin, MD, DrPH, is Dean of the School of Public Health and Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences at the University of Washington. He previously served as director of the National Center for Environmental Health/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), where he established programs in climate change and in the built environment. He also served as Special Assistant to the CDC Director for climate change and health. Dr. Frumkin received an MD from the University of Pennsylvania, an MPH and a DrPH from Harvard University, and further internal and occupational medicine training from the University of Pennsylvania, Cambridge Hospital, and Harvard University.
He has co-authored two Island Press Books: Urban Sprawl and Public Health and most recently Making Healthy Places: Designing And Building For Health, Well-Being, And Sustainability with Andrew Dannenberg and Richard J. Jackson. His other books include Environmental Health: From Global to Local and Safe and Healthy School Environments.
He is also the author or co-author of over 180 scientific journal articles and chapters. He is a fellow of the American College of Physicians, the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Collegium Ramazzini, and the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland.
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.