Developing, Building And Promoting Activity-friendly Communities

Expert Roundtable White Paper

Developing, Building and Promoting Activity-friendly Communities

Sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation New York, New York December 3 and 4, 2001

In the past fifty years or so, we’ve essentially engineered physical activity out of our daily lives. From the way buildings and communities are designed to the dependence on the car for transportation to the advent of television and computers, we’ve become more passive than active in the way we live. -- Michael McGinnis, M.D., Senior Vice President, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Table of Contents

Expert Roundtable Summary of Recommendations........................................................... 3 Background ......................................................................................................................... 4 Presentation on the Emergence of an Inactive Society, Causes and Consequences........... 5 Summary of Findings by Participants................................................................................. 7 Suggested Further Action by the Foundation ................................................................... 13 Appendix A. Roundtable Participants.............................................................................. 17 Appendix B. Supplemental Reading................................................................................ 18

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Expert Roundtable Summary of Recommendations As part of its initiative to help create activity-friendly communities, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation held an expert roundtable on December 3 and 4, 2001, to identify problems and recommend strategies and future projects for the Foundation to partner with real estate professionals and local communities. In brief, these recommendations were: •

Continue to research the connection between urban design, physical activity and health outcomes. This would include data connecting various urban design patterns with levels of physical activity, better housing preference data, zoning and other regulatory barriers, learning from existing pilot projects, and other promising areas of research.

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Develop useful tools for stakeholders and communities. This would include a “tool kit” for local and state government, including model zoning codes, “community report cards,” an information clearinghouse, and new redevelopment options for owners of aging commercial properties.

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Communicate the message. This would include refining for the public, decisionmakers, and urban planning and design schools the message about the serious problem of inactivity, developing effective communication tools, media, and useful documents, funding public information campaigns, and supporting pedestrian and bicycle advocacy organizations.

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Form partnerships with key stakeholders. This would include creating “Innovation Awards” to recognize and publicize successful initiatives, forming circles of stakeholders from local governments and social service organizations to developers and other real estate professionals, forming collaborations with other funders in the fields of smart growth, health and other sectors, and providing program-related investments to innovative real estate developments.

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Background Alarmed by the health consequences of unhealthy behaviors, such as smoking and sedentary lifestyles, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in August 2001 adopted a new and fourth goal: to promote healthy communities and lifestyles. Promoting physical activity is one key to reaching this goal, which the Foundation is pursuing through three focus areas – increasing physical activity by adults over 50 years old, integrating health behavior counseling into routine medical care, and creating activity-friendly communities. This expert roundtable about creating activity-friendly communities explored community design and transportation strategies – to improve our built environment and thereby reduce our over-reliance on personal vehicle transportation and allow people to walk and bicycle as part of their daily routine. Other strategies focused on changing the social environment to encourage more walking and other physical activities. The Foundation has committed $37 million in grant programs in the past two years for this focus area to help build the evidence base about the relationship of design and activity, to create community models, and build leadership, to develop resources, and to build awareness. Earlier efforts by the Foundation included a white paper (“Active Living through Community Design,” by Gretchen William Torres and others, February 2001) and a series of meetings with community development and design experts to identify and develop successful strategies to enable and promote such activity-friendly communities. The edited transcript of the expert roundtable is available from the Funders’ Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities (www.fundersnetwork.org).

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Presentation on the Emergence of an Inactive Society, Causes and Consequences Obesity is a rapidly-spreading national epidemic that surpasses all other causes of premature death, except tobacco use, according to Kate Kraft and Marla Hollander of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation program staff. It happened, in part, because of the steep decline in physical activity by Americans of all ages in recent decades and is a major factor leading to such chronic conditions as diabetes, heart disease, and several types of cancer. Physical inactivity can exacerbate a variety of other chronic conditions, such as arthritis, asthma, and osteoporosis. Kraft and Hollander made these points: •

In 1985, there was no state in which over 15 percent of the population was obese (30 or more pounds overweight). Only 13 years later, by 1998, there were 40 states in which over 15 percent were obese. One expert likened it to the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. An estimated 61 percent of adult Americans and 47 percent of children today are overweight or obese.

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Lack of exercise and diet are the second leading cause of premature deaths in the United States, behind only tobacco use, totaling about 300,000 per year. It affects all population groups, regardless of age, income, ethnicity or gender.

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Perhaps most alarming is the rise in childhood obesity. As a result, type two diabetes, usually affecting only adults, has increased dramatically among children and adolescents.

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Physical Activity: The New Wonder Drug? Jonathan Rose of Affordable Housing Development Inc. speculated that, if physical activity were promoted like a newly-released pharmaceutical, the public would be clamoring to buy it; its benefits are so strong and sustained. In fact, there is no drug as effective, inexpensive, or with fewer side effects. It requires only 30 minutes of moderate physical activity most days of the week for adults – and 60 minutes for children. These are enough to reduce significantly the health risks associated with obesity and other chronic conditions. Simply walking, climbing stairs or other moderate exercise can yield similar benefits – and is more easily adopted and maintained – than such vigorous exercise such as running or other sports. Even if it does not result in weight loss, it improves health significantly. And it costs nothing. “Apparently there is no drug that is as effective as physical activity,” Rose said. “If the New York Times would put on its front page, ‘Miracle Drug Achieved the Following Benefits,’ which would be the benefits of physical activity, people would be thronging to buy it.”

Only 24 percent of all American adults get the recommended level of regular vigorous or sustained moderate physical activity. The 5

rest are either inactive or not regularly active. Only 20 percent of children meet the moderate regular physical activity guidelines. For example, barely 10 percent of children nationwide walk or bicycle to school. •

Preliminary evidence suggests that compact and walkable communities often have lower rates of obesity than sprawl communities because they provide ample opportunities for routine daily exercise. Similar evidence suggests that adding such features as parks, pathways, sidewalks and other pedestrian and bicycle facilities can improve the level of physical activity in a community.

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Diet is an important part of the obesity problem, but a complex and difficult behavior to address. Increased physical activity is an initially more effective approach because it is a more positive behavior; it adds something good to someone’s life, rather than takes something away. Also, physical activity may be a gateway behavior that helps people improve their diets and otherwise adopt a healthier lifestyle.

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Six Foundation-funded community pilot projects to promote physical activity had significant initial results for increasing physical activity. From adding a health and walking program and the development of a central park in Durham N.C. to enlisting doctors in Wheeling W.Va. to write prescriptions for walking, these projects have built awareness and provided tools that have yielded promising results already.

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The Foundation wants to understand better the barriers and opportunities for improving the built environment to better enable routine physical activities such as walking and bicycling – especially the role of real estate financing and development, zoning and building codes, and consumer markets and preferences. It also wants to know what the Foundation can do to help influence these factors, such as expanded research and data, where its resources can have the most impact, and what new partnerships can be established.

Note: Surgeon General David Satcher released a report on December 13, 2001, warning that obesity threatens U.S. health gains. He emphasized the role of physical inactivity, in addition to diet. “We’re not talking about quick-fix diets,” he said, “We’re talking about lifestyles.”

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Summary of Findings by Participants Following this presentation, the participants discussed in depth the widespread neglect of community design features that enable high levels of physical activities, the lack of awareness of the health consequences of sprawl, regulatory and financial barriers to creating activity-friendly communities, and the complexity of mobilizing the disparate parts of the real estate industry to transform the built environment of thousands of communities. In more detail, here are major findings of this discussion: 1. The greatest progress will come from increasing opportunities for physical activity as a part of routine daily life, and not just infrequent leisure time exercise. “Creating environments that are routinely available for when the car trip suddenly seems stupid 50 percent of the time, or even 25 percent of the time, that’s where the work is,” stated Todd Zimmerman. Increasing recreational facilities for children and adults – and physical education in schools – are important, but the greater benefit will come from expanding pedestrian and bicycling facilities, access to public transit, and desirable destinations in our communities. Examples range from building sidewalk and greenway networks and redesigning intersections for safe pedestrian crossings to promoting mixed-use new or redevelopment projects that combine residential, retail and office uses. Improving pedestrian safety is central to this effort. As Janet Heroux put it, “If you want people to walk, give them a destination. Give them some place to walk to – and our traditional towns have that – the Main Street with all the errands and church and temple and train station.” 2. The built environment of communities today comprises at least 80 percent of what will exist in 2020. Thus we must address modifying our present built environment, and not just the building of new communities. New master-plan communities built as traditional neighborhoods with mixed uses will continue to be important as benchmarks for activity-friendly urban designs and for demonstrating strong consumer demand for homes there. However, new construction expands our built environment by about one percent a year only, on average. This underscores the importance of preserving what works today and redeveloping what does not work if we are to have any significant impact. As an example of what to stop doing, private developers and governments mistakenly persist in demolishing compact downtown and inner-suburb areas to build parking and single-use buildings or to relocate schools in far-flung locations, worsening opportunities for physical activity.

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Reversing such policies – and redeveloping these areas – would bring more people to more central urban locations, where walking and other routine exercise would be easier. The more dispersed suburban and exurban areas that exist today will require more imaginative and costly modifications. 3. Much of that 80 percent was built after World War II and is suburban in nature in inner-ring areas. Because many of these places were not originally walkable, compact traditional cities or towns, they require different approaches. The Urban Land Institute has released a study on how to transform strip retail centers and is preparing another on how to transform suburban business districts into mixed-use projects and districts that add residential to the retail and commercial uses there, according to Rachelle Levitt of the Urban Land Institute. These are difficult to design and finance because they were not built originally to be pedestrian or activity-friendly, but they also have advantages. For example, the village of Park Forest, Ill., converted a bankrupt shopping mall, one of the first built in the Midwest, into a town center. The village demolished parts of the mall to build streets through it, reclaimed the parking lots for sidewalks and development, and used remaining parts of the mall for a village hall, a university extension campus, and is negotiating for a branch location of downtown Chicago museums, according to Scott Bernstein of the Center for Neighborhood Technology. He also noted that Orange County, Cal., has compiled a list of about 700 first-generation strip shopping centers for possible mixed-use redevelopment. “They’re already assembled. They’ve got the parking. Their zoning is permitted for higher uses. It wouldn’t take much to reconnect them,” Bernstein said. The surplus of retail space nationwide, especially in inner suburbs, is an opportunity to convert some of to multifamily and other high-density housing. “We’re making these heroic efforts to create traditional neighborhoods and get a little bit of retail in them,” Todd Zimmerman said. “We’ve got plenty of retail in America. Put housing where the retail is.” Richard Baron of McCormack Baron & Associates noted that Pomona, Cal., is planning to convert some of its strip retail centers into affordable housing, particularly to attract teachers at the area schools and colleges. 4. Complex and deeply-ingrained regulations – that do not consider health impacts – constrain the expansion of activity-friendly communities. Well over 10,000 local governments develop and enforce planning, zoning and building regulations that too often prevent developers from building new and redevelopment mixed-use projects. Many include numerous performance criteria, such as vehicle movement, fire safety and water and air quality – but not healthy activities. For example, transportation criteria focus almost exclusively on vehicle movements based on precise counts of vehicle traffic flows, with no corresponding estimates or criteria for pedestrian travel.

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The public health and safety goals developed in the early 20th century, and largely still in use, resulted in policies to separate land uses, such as keeping industrial areas away from residential areas. “I have never seen a local zoning ordinance that has as an objective performance criteria to enhance community health,” Downs said. “Zoning and land use are about separating categories of use and controlling density of development.” Transportation programs, and regulations that govern them, have a very important impact on community walkability – yet largely ignore the importance or necessity for bicycle, pedestrian and transit facilities. “There’s a parallel network, which is federal transportation legislation, that by and large goes to metropolitan planning organizations which determine how transportation funds are spent – but in most cases are completely unrelated to the land use regulating process,” said Ben Starrett of the Funders’ Network for Smart Growth. At the local level, transportation spending dwarfs all other categories of government capital spending, according to Leon County (Fla.) Commissioner Bob Rackleff. “Federal transportation policies are the biggest land use program in the country,” added Constance Beaumont of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Moreover, by requiring excessively large parcels of land, standards for new public school siting and construction encourage communities to replace smaller, close-in neighborhood schools with sprawling suburban campuses. “In the world of school facilities there are these state standards that mandate a gazillion acres for a school,” Beaumont said. “So the community has two choices: to destroy the existing neighborhood it is trying to educate, or build the school in the middle of nowhere, and kids have nothing to walk to.” 5. These regulations militate against innovative real estate projects by requiring uncertain and complex zoning and building code variance approvals, with increased financial risks. Outmoded and inflexible regulations discourage all but the most determined developers, especially those of small-scale projects. Several participants noted that small-scale developers, not master-plan community developers, actually have by far the largest cumulative impacts on our built environment. Mixed-use projects can usually be built only after obtaining numerous variances from local governments. The difficulties and delays in obtaining variances, in turn, result in small-scale real estate projects that discourage physical activity because they are the easiest to obtain approvals for. They are the path of least resistance. “America did not become unwalkable, and generally unsustainable, because of masterplanned communities,” Todd Zimmerman said. “We have suffered a death of a thousand cuts. Much of our environment is made by small developers following the path of least resistance. The dentist-real estate broker partnership building a single-use box on a culde-sac is merely building according to local regulations.” Conversely, significantly improving our built environment will require a regulatory process that no longer penalizes innovative small-scale solutions. “It’s a fundamental paradox that new urbanist developers get up every morning and think about ways to improve their project, ways to add something new that makes a better place to live, but the regulatory and approval

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process is completely stacked against this,” said Robert Chapman of Traditional Neighborhood Partners LLC. The number one concern of developers and builders is certainty of approval by local regulators, according to Tom Troy of Sharbell Development Corp. “It is certainty about when you buy a property and you make an investment, you know all the rules on the front end, and the rules stay the same through the process, so that you’re not caught out with a change in rules halfway through the process,” Troy said. 6. Institutional and other real estate investors prefer to finance conventional singleuse projects that are standardized and familiar. They resist financing mixed-use projects that involve complex and multiple financial performance risks and uncertainties – making the financing of these projects difficult and expensive. “Most people who invest in real estate want to invest in a product type which is simple in which all of the variables can be expressed on a one-page spreadsheet,” Robert Chapman said. Almost all of the $1.6 trillion invested in real estate by institutions annually goes into developing and building 19 standardized “product” types, such as big box stores, self-service storage centers, and suburban low-rise office buildings. All but four or five of these product types help produce more urban sprawl and standardized, monotonous building appearances. Constance Beaumont called this standardization “incremental dullification.” Because of longstanding traditional financial mechanism, institutions resist mixed-use projects, according to Rachelle Levitt. “They’ll finance the commercial side or they’ll finance the residential side, they just don’t want to mix the risk,” she said. “It’s just not in their vocabulary to deal like that.” Bernstein noted that “we don’t have mixed-use financing products.” 7. The complex structure – and high penalties for failure – of the real estate development and finance industry further discourage innovative mixed-use projects. Real estate and construction is our nation’s largest industry. It includes architects and planners, developers and builders, suppliers, landowners, property managers, different investors at each stage, regulators at all levels of government, municipal services providers, owners and managers. Peter Katz of Urban Advantage Inc. noted that in other industries, such as toys, decision-making and execution are simpler and to meet changes in consumer preferences. For example, he said, “when some executive at Mattel gets a hunch about a new toy, that product can be in the stores this Christmas. When change occurs within the walls of a single company, an industry can be very consumer responsive.” However, in real estate, Katz noted, “there is a whole food chain of people – investors, developers, local regulators, builders, tenants, neighbors, end users, and others – all of whom need to be in agreement about the form of a new development. If one link in that chain is not in agreement, that property doesn’t get built, and the folks who initially

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backed that development lose big.” Therefore, it’s a mistake to believe that, “if the developers came around, the world would change. We need to address all the links in the chain simultaneously.” Also, most builders or developers operate on a small scale and cannot afford the higher pre-development costs of innovative projects. Tom Downs stated that builders and developers have a “passion for building.” It is not necessarily a risk-averse profession, but “there’s also a passion about surviving. It’s one of the few fields that I know of where builders say if you haven’t been bankrupt once you’re not a real builder,” he said. That high penalty for failure limits the number of people willing to take the risk of building a new kind of community. 8. A single large employer creating large new workplaces can have a major impact on improving a city’s walkability and level of physical activity – and demonstrate that is makes financial sense to do this. After senior management concluded that it made financial sense, Bellsouth developed its Metro Atlanta Plan to build and own three new mixed-use office centers, relocating about 10,500 employees to them from widely scattered remote locations around the metropolitan areas by 2003. All three are at or near rail transit stations and include farecard subsidies for employees (as well as fees for employee parking and reduced number of employee parking spaces). One of them, in the Buckhead area, will include a hotel, apartments, and single-family homes, in addition to three office buildings. The two office buildings at another, the Lindbergh rail transit station, will overlook a new “main street” with restaurants, shopping, a movie theater, and rental and condominium apartments. Two new buildings at the third location, next to the existing Bellsouth Center in Midtown, will include amenities that add to the revitalization already underway in that part of the city. Building on that scale, according to Diana Marshman of Bellsouth, not only will reduce the corporation’s lease expenses and build its equity, it will bring employees together for more effective communication, idea sharing and faster decision-making. Amenities like cafeterias and coffee bars were located centrally, and lobbies widened, to encourage employees to congregate there. Because of the large scale, amenities like fitness centers were feasible. The surrounding neighborhoods can also benefit because many of the retail and services will be open after work hours. She stated that the company believes that the new centers will reduce employee stress in commuting and improve employee health and career retention. However, what ultimately clinched the decision was that it made financial sense to Bellsouth. “What really finally sold the whole project was the fact that it was a financially sound decision to make,” Marshman said. “It compelled the company to say there is no reason not to do this.”

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9. The small scale of many franchise business owners limits the number of start-up franchise businesses in inner cities and older suburbs. This is important because the majority of start-up retail and service businesses nationwide are franchisees. “Individual franchisees can’t afford to do the market analysis to show the benefits of opening businesses in these areas,” Scott Bernstein said, so they bypass what are lucrative business opportunities in underserved locations. *

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Suggested Further Action by the Foundation After developing the findings just described, the expert roundtable participants suggested numerous future activities by the Foundation to promote activity-friendly communities. Organized in four major categories, the suggestions are the following:

Continue to Research the Connection Between Urban Design, Physical Activity and Health Outcomes . . . The Foundation is in a unique position to fund research that is not financially feasible for individual businesses or local governments to do on their own. Among the proposed research topics were: •

Improve the data to establish more firmly the link between urban and transportation design, inactivity and its health consequences.

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Post-occupancy behavior studies of communities built or retrofitted for walkability could show better what designs and facilities work or don’t work. The Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) was suggested as a potential partner in this research effort.

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Improve consumer preference surveys to broaden the range of questions and generate data about the real choices that consumers can have, such as the importance of neighborhood walkability.

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Document how urban and older suburban retail, especially grocery stores, in underserved areas are generating very high sales per square foot.

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Identify in detail the key regulatory barriers to activity-friendly urban design and identify key changes that state and local governments can adopt to overcome these barriers. This will require a deeper understanding of “insiders” – the local government, financing and development – points of view, expertise and language to develop new achievable solutions.

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Identify other state and local government decisions that help determine activityfriendly environments, such as siting of public facilities like schools and agency buildings, as well as transportation programs.

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Develop localized data for and assess the feasibility of “location-efficient health insurance” by which underwriters could use accurate risk scoring that makes possible lower rates in activity-friendly communities with higher levels of walking and other forms of exercise.

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Conduct further research of existing community pilot projects to shed more light on the effectiveness of different approaches.

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Develop Useful Tools for Stakeholders and Communities . . . •

Develop report and “tool kit” for local and state governments, including model zoning and building codes, and public facility siting and transportation policies that can help promote activity-friendly real estate infill and older suburb developments.

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Encourage the use of sophisticated community indicators, or community report cards, by community organizations and others to assess the walkability of their neighborhoods and communities. These should be sufficiently detailed and make use of GIS base mapping to gauge the complexities of a truly activity-friendly community. For example, measuring only the miles of sidewalks ignores the lack of safe crossings at arterial roadways.

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Provide a clearinghouse of studies and other data that document the relationship between lack of activity-friendly community design and the problems of physical inactivity, obesity, and health.

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Develop an approach by which institutional owners and managers of aging strip malls and shopping malls at risk of failing can evaluate the economic potential of redeveloping these properties into mixed-use projects, including housing, or even new town centers. This approach could build on the efforts of the Congress for the New Urbanism and form a “dead mall task force” that prods into action the pension fund managers who own these places.

Communicate the Message . . . •

Continue to refine the unique and compelling message that conventional development patterns lead to physical inactivity and serious health problems. This effort would incorporate relevant existing research in coherent packages that include arguments that resonate with the public and decision-makers.

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Develop a variety of versatile and easy-to-use video, Internet, Power Point and other presentations to communicate with audiences ranging from professional and business associations to the general public. One such presentation could be on the benefits of walking for high school Driver’s Education Course students.

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Create a document, “Ten Principles for Walkable Communities,” similar to the Urban Land Institute’s Ten Principles for Strip Retail and the Suburban Business District publication.

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Undertake public information campaigns to educate the general public about the impact of community design on physical activity levels and health consequences.

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Such campaigns could include a series of programs on National Public Radio or an Advertising Council campaign to promote walking. •

Support the expansion of local pedestrian, bicycling and transit advocacy organizations that can persuade local and state officials to improve transportation choices and activity-friendly policies and acknowledge their leadership publicly. Such organizations can identify infrastructure programs, such as safe walks to schools, persuade local governments to invest in improvements, and maintain a continuing presence to ensure that improvements continue.

Form Partnerships with Key Stakeholders . . . •

Create Innovation Awards to celebrate and reward successful activity-friendly ideas and projects that advance and/or to reward individual leadership. One reward for innovative real estate developers could the granting of credit enhancements. Individual leaders in the field could be rewarded with personal genius-type grants modeled on the MacArthur Foundation’s fellows program.

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Form what one participant called a “virtuous circle committed to activity-friendly communities,” which includes the full spectrum of stakeholders involved in real estate and community development. Among the many stakeholders as: •

State and local government organizations like the National League of Cities, Conference of Mayors, National Association of Counties, National Governors Association and National Association of State Legislatures.

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The National Association of Home Builders and National Association of Realtors, which already have a strong interest in smart growth issues.

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Design and planning professionals represented by the American Institute of Architects, American Planning Association, American Society of Landscape Architects, and planning and design schools.

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Transportation standards and professional organizations, such as the Institute of Transportation Engineers and Association of State Highway Transportation Officials.

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The American Bankers Association, Mortgage Bankers Association, Pension Real Estate Association and other financial trade associations, which are key to financing real estate projects.

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Such large commercial developer organizations as the International Council of Shopping Centers, National Association of Industrial Office Parks, International Association of Real Estate Executives, International Development and Research Council, and Master Plan Community Council of the Urban Land Institute. 15

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Individual chief executive officers of corporations facing serious retention and replacement problems, and such other problems as the health of baby boom generation employees and lack of affordable housing for employees.

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Help local social services organizations, such as the United Way, to help create activity-promoting programs. Local United Way and similar organizations already fund a variety of health-related activities and can be uniquely capable of working on problems in older suburbs.

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Engage public schools and affordable housing operators to develop programs that encourage healthier diets, especially for high-risk families, to complement physical activity programs.

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In cooperation with real estate professionals, design and propose a new federal credit-enhancement program for mixed-use affordable housing developments, with extra points for such features as transit stops and safe paths to schools.

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Provide program-related investments to help finance and obtain pre-development steps for innovating mixed-use demonstration projects that can show local lenders and builders that similar projects can succeed. Working with the Real Estate Finance and Smart Growth Project of the Funders’ Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities was one avenue suggested for moving forward in this area. #

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Appendix A. Roundtable Participants Richard Baron, CEO, McCormick, Baron & Associates Constance Beaumont, Director of State & Local Policy, National Trust for Historic Preservation Adrienne Bell, Development Director, Struever Bros, Eccles & Rouse, Inc. Scott Bernstein, President, Center for Neighborhood Technology Robert Chapman III, Principal, TND Partners LLC Tom Downs, Director, University of Maryland Smart Growth Center Janet, Heroux, Consultant, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Marla Hollander, Program Associate, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Peter Katz, Marketing/Strategic Consultant, Urban Advantage M. Katherine Kraft, Ph.D., Senior Program Officer, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Rachelle Levitt, Senior Vice President for Policy & Practice, Urban Land Institute Diana Marshman, Strategic Planner, Atlanta Metroplan/Bell South Jerry Murphy, Director, The Business-Higher Education Forum Kim Ogren, Program Manager, Funders' Network for Smart Growth & Livable Communities Tracy Orleans, Sr. Scientist & Sr. Program Officer, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Bob Rackleff, County Commissioner, Leon County, Florida Jonathan Rose, President, Affordable Housing Development Kim Schochet, Program Assistant, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Kennedy Smith, Director, National Main Street Center, National Trust for Historic Preservation Ben Starrett, Executive Director, Funders' Network for Smart Growth & Livable Communities Tom Troy, Senior Vice President, Sharbell, Newton Inc. Paul, Weech, Director of Policy, Fannie Mae Todd Zimmerman, Principal, Zimmerman/Volk Associates, Inc.

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Appendix B. Supplemental Reading “Active Community Environments (ACEs),” National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, June 2000. http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/aces.htm “Barriers to Children Walking and Biking to School – United States 1999,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, August 16, 2002. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5132a1.htm Frank, Lawrence D. and Peter Engelke, How Land Use and Transportations Systems Impact Public Health: A Literature Review of the Relationship Between Physical Activity and Built Form, ACEs Working Paper #1, updated 12/26/2000. http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/pdf/aces-workingpaper1.pdf Frank, Lawrence D., Peter Engelke and Daniel Hourigan, How Land Use and Transportations Systems Impact Public Health: An Annotated Bibliography, ACEs Working Paper #1, updated 12/26/2000. http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/pdf/acesworkingpaper2.pdf Frumkin, Howard, “Urban Sprawl and Public Health,” Public Health Reports, Vol. 117 (September 2001, revised December 2001). http://www.publichealthgrandrounds.unc.edu/urban/frumkin.pdf Gregg, Valerie, “Taming Urban Sprawl,” Public Health, Emory University Woodruff Health Sciences Center, Spring 2001. http://www.emory.edu/WHSC/HSNEWS/PUB/PH/Spring01/sprawl.html Healthy Places, Healthy People: Promoting Public Health & Physical Activity through Community Design, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, October 2001. http://www.rwjf.org/publications/publicationsPdfs/healthy_places.pdf “Kids Walk-to-School: A Guide to Promote Walking to School,” National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, undated. http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/kidswalk/pdf/kidswalk.pdf Myers, Dowell, et al., “The Coming Demand: Housing Consumers Want Walkable, Mixed-Use Neighborhoods,” Congress for the New Urbanism, March 21, 2000. Adapted from research funded by Bank of America and the Funders’ Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities. http://www.cnu.org/cnu_reports/Coming_Demand.pdf “Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Prevent and Decrease Overweight and Obesity,” U.S. Surgeon General, (2001). http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/topics/obesity/calltoaction/CalltoAction.pdf #

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