From the Bottom Up: A Grassroots Approach to Healthy Communities & Neighborhoods

3 units

We spend more than 90% of our lives indoors (National Research Council 1981), yet we know much more about ambient environmental factors and health than we do about the built environment and health. The built environment is defined as buildings, homes, places of business, work places, schools, food stores, public spaces, parks and recreational areas. It extends to electric transmission lines, waste disposal facilities, transit arrangements, roads, utilities, fixtures, and all other man-made entities that form the physical characteristics of a community. In sum, it includes the places where we live, work, and play, places that keep us moving, communicating and functioning, i.e., nutrition and physical activity environments, streetscapes, transportation environments, and everything in between. How we design and build where we live has changed dramatically over the past century. In the early 1900s, urban areas tended to be compact and communities were walk-able, with a central business district and a mix of housing and services. Then, connections between urban design and health and disease were more clearly recognized, and planners and public health practitioners often worked together to deal with problems related to poor sanitation and housing conditions. Increasing movement away from such urban locales over the last 50 years led to lower-density developments, segregation of land uses, and extensive roadway construction. Today, this trend, sometimes referred to as urban sprawl, is characterized by huge increases in urbanized land area and vehicle miles traveled [U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) 2001a]. These changes have both direct and indirect impacts on our environment and on public health. The major themes that will be presented and discussed are Sustainable Design, Landscape and Sustainable Sites Initiative, Passive Survivability, Universal Design and Building Codes, Engineering-Urban Infrastructure. Considerable emphasis will be given to social considerations in neighborhood development and residential design. During the entire fall term students will explore, examine, and explain the neighborhood in which the students currently live in the St. Louis region, and document their research in a comprehensive report. The course requires students to write the Where I Live report and to present their findings in class. There is no final examination.