Town Land Use Patterns and Public Health

I have started the new APA on-line course on Planning for Healthy Places and Health Impact Assessments, and stumbled upon two articles on the Massachusetts Municipal Association Web-site, Cambridge and Boston Ranked Among the Best For Walking and Forum Examines Planning and Public Health which got me to thinking, just how healthy is the typical suburban and rural land use pattern?

Let's think about this, most towns have large lot, single family zoning. Typical lot sizes are 40,000 sf. Typical frontage requirements are 200 sf. Even if we require sidewalks in these subdivisions, where would you walk to? Walking six doors down, and you've walked a quarter mile. While we might be providing a pleasant walk, that's all it really is, it takes you nowhere, you cannot meet any of your daily needs - like walk for a loaf of bread or gallon of milk.

Most towns also continue to have most of their zoning set up as single use zones, even where mixed uses are allowed, they make up a minority of the land area in a community. Mixing residential and commercial uses really remains the anomoly.

Our commercial zones also require buildings to have large zoning setbacks, setbacks which encourage parking to be located between any adjacent sidewalks and the retail use. This pattern encourages the use of a car, and discourages walking. Even in areas where we may have a business cluster, several buildings as part of one development area (South Shore Plaza in Braintree or Shoppers World in Framingham for instance) moving around is easier by car than by foot.

We clearly need to rethink our development requirements. We need to move houses closer together. We need to move houses closer to commercial uses. We need to move the commercial uses closer to the streets. Force sidewalk oriented entrances for commercial buildings. Move parking to beside or behind buildings.

This is going to be a huge challenge. The recent gasoline spike has started to interest some in finding ways to improve mobility. Perhaps, it is time to start pushing land use standards that promote energy efficient use of land.