Health and aging

Abstract: It’s less dangerous to live in a relatively high-crime city than in a suburb where the crime rate is lower. The reason is that more lives are lost in traffic accidents than in crimes. The threat is especially fearsome for young people. A two-foot increase in street width results in 35 to 5 percent more accidents with injuries. The broad thoroughfares in conventional suburbs encourage speeding, while narrower streets in cities and in traditional neighborhood developments slow vehicles down. This chapter looks at a variety of human health and safety issues and the ways in which good community design contributes to well-being.

From a health perspective, one of the best things a person can do is to make walking a part of daily life. New Urbanism is associated with substantially more walking, as determined by studies of three TNDs: Orenco Station and Fairview Village, both in Oregon, and Southern Village in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. This chapter looks at efforts to integrate schools into neighborhood and Main Street settings so that children and others will walk or bicycle more often, reducing the incidence of obesity. This chapter tells about three tools for ascertaining an area’s walkability: a Web-based instrument called Walk Score; a checklist developed at St. Louis University’s School of Public Health; and INDEX, a geographic information system tool used by planners and urban designers.

Also examined is the Lifelong Communities Initiative of the Atlanta Regional Commission, which identified ways of making communities versatile and convenient so that people can live in them at any age. Included is a checklist on mobility, social interaction, healthy living, dwellings, and services at the scale of the building, street, community, and region. The chapter concludes by discussing “visitability” — the ability of a disabled person to visit a house or apartment.