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Urban Planning + Public Health: A Match Made in Heaven?

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YES?

Urban planners and public health researchers worked closely to design healthier communities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As understanding of the links between cleanliness and disease grew, new ways of designing cities to improve sanitation, including sewage systems and zoning laws, were a high priority for the increasingly urban population. French urban planner Georges-Eugène Haussmann's late 19th century renovation of Paris was an early example of a city design which aims to reduce the spread of disease, with wider avenues and more advanced sewer systems. In the United States as well, keeping waste off the streets and developing zoning regulations to prevent contamination became priorities for new cities, highlighting the benefits of using new knowledge about disease to build better communities.

NO?

As medicine became more advanced and basic sanitation became standard in all new developments, the link between the two fields began to appear less relevant. The second half of the 20th century saw a drop-off in interest in ongoing collaboration between urban planners and health researchers. 

MAYBE?

Only with the start of the 21st century did new concerns regarding pollution and obesity bring the link back into the spotlight; Walk-ability of new communities has replaced sanitation as a holy grail of urban planning. Communities where locals walk to their destinations offer myriad benefits. Greenhouse gas production is reduced with less cars on the road, limiting environmental damage as well as lung disease caused by air contamination. Regular exercise becomes part of a daily commute, lowering obesity rates. The full potential of a collaboration between these two fields is not yet known.

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This project seeks to explore three different viewpoints on the relationship between urban planning and it's future.