We just read a recently released report by the American Public Health Association on public health costs associated with transportation. The report documents the costs of poor transport policies, including the $142 billion the country pays in costs from obesity, the $50 billion from traffic-related air pollution and $180 billion from traffic crashes. The report [...]
Filed under: health, planning, transportation | Tagged: research | 1 Comment »
Active Living Research is out with a synthesis of research showing that communities economically benefit from parks and walkability. The report, entitled The Economic Benefits of Open Space, Recreation Facilities and Walkable Community Design was led by Lilly Shoup of the University of Maryland and Reid Ewing of the University of Utah. For any park [...]
Filed under: economics | Tagged: research | Leave a Comment »
A new study says improved access to trails, parks and recreation programs can help address the nation’s obesity problem, but shrinking budgets are a real challenge to actually doing this, as reported by Science Daily. What’s badly needed, the researchers said, are more recreation facilities and non-motorized trails, with information about them made readily available [...]
Filed under: health | Tagged: research | Leave a Comment »
Transportation for America this last week released a report on a dire situation for pedestrians in the nation’s cities. In the last 15 years, more than 76,000 Americans have been killed while crossing or walking along a street in their community. More than 43,000 Americans – including 3,906 children under 16 – have been killed [...]
Filed under: planning, transportation | Tagged: federal policy, research, walkability | 2 Comments »
We get this question a lot, and there are a lot of meanings people use or perceive. For the The Trust for Public Land’s survey of city park systems, the general answer is that a park is anything set aside for the public from natural areas to plazas to trails to neighborhood parks. Taken all [...]
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Last week, TPL released the results from its annual survey of park systems in the nation’s 77 largest cities. We thought it worthy to delve into the data a bit in a couple of posts. We’ll start off with acreage, a measure that can be looked at a couple of different ways, using the top [...]
Filed under: planning | Tagged: research | 3 Comments »
A new study shows that walkable neighborhoods with nearby amenities, from retail to parks, have higher home values. The study (pdf) was conducted by CEOs for Cities and reports that: After controlling for all of these other factors that are known to influence housing value, our study showed a positive correlation between walkability and housing [...]
Filed under: economics, planning | Tagged: research | 1 Comment »
The Trust for Public Land just released its most recent report on statistics related to city parks, showing that the 77 largest city park systems nationwide provide more than 1.3 million acres of parkland. The 77 cities added more than 5,000 acres of parkland as the public turns to local parks in a time when [...]
Filed under: planning | Tagged: research, usership | Leave a Comment »
The trouble with light rail and subway, some say, is that it only serves a small area around each station, and that vast areas can be left to dependence on cars. Planners consider mass transit service areas around light rail stations and subway stops to be about 1/4 mile — any farther and you’ll see [...]
Filed under: transportation | Tagged: bikes, dallas, research, transit | 4 Comments »
How can states become more involved in funding environmental “cleaning and greening” efforts? A new report (pdf) by the Northeast-Midwest Institute addresses the question by looking at states that have issued bonds for brownfield redevelopment, park creation, conservation and clean water initiatives. The below table from the report provides a summary of these programs and [...]
Filed under: funding, renewal | Tagged: brownfields, research | Leave a Comment »
