Promoting Public Health through Smart Growth: Building Healthier Communities through Transportation and Land Use Policies and Practices

This report explains how our built environment shapes our transportation choices, and in turn, human health. It reviews the existing research for a range of transportation-related health impacts on seven public health outcomes: Physical Activity and Obesity, Air Quality, Traffic Safety, Noise, Water Quality, Mental Health, and Social Capital. Land use patterns, because they relate with transportation behaviour, subsequently affect public health in a number of ways: through physical activity levels, availability of healthy food choices, exposure to crashes, air pollution and noise, and community interaction and mobility. The same basic smart growth principles that provide environmental, energy, and economic benefits can also help to support healthier communities. Compact land use patterns with high-quality pedestrian environments and a mix of land uses can improve public health by promoting active forms of transportation, reducing per capita air pollution and associated respiratory ailments, and lowering the risk of car related accidents. Taken collectively, research to date shows that over the long term, land use and transportation policies can provide significant health benefits.

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