Ann Forsyth

Harvard University | Harvard · Department of Urban Planning and Design

How do older people’s living environments influence their vulnerabilities to climate change? Much has been written about the physiological consequences of climate change for older individuals, particularly the dangers of increased incidence of severe heat. Less is known about how older people’s residential settings moderate their exposure to climat...

Aging in place is a policy goal for many governments and a personal goal for numerous older people. But what does it mean? Drawing on both scholarly and gray literature, this article outlines seven themes underlying definitions of aging in place. Some are descriptive: never moving, staying put for as long as possible, or remaining in the same vicin...

What audit tools are available to assess neighborhood suitability for aging in place? Drawing on theories from environmental gerontology, the article outlines physical and social environmental characteristics influencing aging. Eight research audit tools and three community/practitioner tools were identified using a Boolean search strategy. They em...

The number of older people who need help with daily tasks will increase during the next century. Currently preferences and policies aim to help older people to stay in their existing homes, to age in place, even as they become less able to care for themselves and, increasingly, live alone. However, the majority of homes in the U.S. and many other c...

This article was originally published under NPG's License to Publish, but has now been made available under a CC BY 4.0 license. The PDF and HTML versions of the paper have been modified accordingly.

The homes and communities in which people live are important determinants of health, influencing opportunities for healthy behaviors and social engagement; limiting exposure to physical risks, toxins, and stressors; and determining access to services and healthcare. For older adults, living environments are critical to healthy aging: these are the...

At any age, the pursuit of a good life is easier in a physical environment that promotes health, supports activities important to self‐fulfillment, and facilitates connections to the larger community. In old age, the home and neighborhood environments are particularly important: they are the locations where older people spend most their time, and t...

In February 2016, China’s State Council released a set of guidelines representing a change in the country’s approach toward neighbourhood design: to move away from superblock neighbourhoods and create a finer network of urban blocks and streets. The paper traces the circumstances that prompted this change, drawing on a comparative review of interna...

This Interface examines the issue of research-practitioner exchange in planning. We look at the issue of knowledge exchange by focusing on three challenges: access, use and collaboration. While not a strict linear hierarchy, these three challenges are interrelated and follow a roughly escalating order. This Interface then asks a range of researcher...

What exactly is meant by the term 'walkability'? In professional, research and public debates the term is used to refer to several quite different kinds of phenomena. Some discussions focus on environmental features or means of making walkable environments, including areas being traversable, compact, physically enticing and safe. Others deal with o...

Inadequate physical activity and obesity during adolescence are areas of public health concern. Questions exist about the role of neighborhoods in the etiology of these problems. This research addressed the relationships of perceived and objective reports of neighborhood crime to adolescent physical activity, screen media use, and body mass index (...

Over the current century, when the world’s population will grow by some billions, much of the increase in the human population will be housed in suburbs. However, sometime after the middle of this century the world’s total population is also likely to level off, increasing in some areas while declining in others, causing new challenges. In this tra...

Recent interest has focused on how the built enviromnent in residential neighborhoods affects walking and other physical activity. The neighborhood around the workplace has been examined far less. This study explored the neighborhood around the workplace and its correlation with the amount of walking, level of physical activity, body mass index, an...

Does a high-tech economy create fundamentally different places from other employment areas? In this paper I propose a typology of small to medium-scale high-technology districts in terms of their physical environments rather than their economic features (which is the more common basis of such classifications). I define a set of recognizable high-te...

Are cyclists different from those who do not cycle in terms of individual and neighborhood characteristics? This article draws on a study of over 700 adults in three groups: those who had cycled in the past week, in the past 2 years, and non-cyclists. It examines their body mass index (BMI), physical activity, sociodemographics, environmental perce...

The aim of this study is to investigate individual and joint associations of the home environment and the neighborhood built environment with adolescent dietary patterns and body mass index (BMI) z-score. Racially/ethnically and socioeconomically diverse adolescents (n=2682; 53.2% girls; mean age14.4 years) participating in the EAT 2010 (Eating and...

Understanding the contextual factors associated with why adults walk is important for those interested in increasing walking as a mode of transportation and leisure. This paper investigates the relationships between neighborhood-level sociodemographic context, individual level sociodemographic characteristics and walking for leisure and transport....

Many transportation planners undertake local surveys for a better understanding of the levels of walking and cycling of residents in their city or town. This paper explores the challenges of designing a robust sampling strategy for such surveys. A review of existing surveys on nonmotorized transportation demonstrated that many existing surveys used...

This population-based study examined whether residential or school neighborhood access to fast food restaurants is related to adolescents' eating frequency of fast food. A classroom-based survey of racially/ethnically diverse adolescents (n=2724) in 20 secondary schools in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota was used to assess eating frequency at five...

There is no consensus as to what exactly constitutes a suburb. This article examines the range of suburban definitions in terms of their structure and the topical issues that they grapple with. Suburbs have been defined according to many different dimensions from location and transportation modes to culture and physical appearance. Given this confu...

The Pedestrian and Bicycling Survey (PABS) is a questionnaire designed to be economical and straightforward to administer so that it can be used by local governments interested in measuring the amount and purposes of walking and cycling in their communities. In addition, it captures key sociodemographic characteristics of those participating in the...

As the planning academy has grown and evolved, it has developed different ways of doing planning research. People may (a) work at the scientific frontier, (b) investigate issues of practical relevance, (c) reflect on the implications of practice, or (d) try to answer the enduring questions of planning. These are important differences. Different cul...

Obesity researchers increasingly use geographic information systems to measure exposure and access in neighborhood food and physical activity environments. This paper proposes a network buffering approach, the "sausage" buffer. This method can be consistently and easily replicated across software versions and platforms, avoiding problems with propr...

Few studies have addressed the potential influence of neighborhood characteristics on adolescent obesity risk, and findings have been inconsistent. Identify patterns among neighborhood food, physical activity, street/transportation, and socioeconomic characteristics and examine their associations with adolescent weight status using three statistica...

This study used latent class analysis to classify adolescent home neighborhoods (n=344) according to built environment characteristics, and tested how adolescent physical activity, sedentary behavior, and screen time differ by neighborhood type/class. Four distinct neighborhood classes emerged: (1) low-density retail/transit, low walkability index...

Would urban design considerations and practices be different if the experience of bicycling was given a more central place? Drawing on a review of international literature and practice, this paper compares the characteristics of cyclists with those of pedestrians and motorists, showing that cyclists have a substantial number of unique characteristi...

The Irvine Minnesota Inventory (IMI) was designed to measure environmental features that may be associated with physical activity and particularly walking. This study assesses how well the IMI predicts physical activity and walking behavior and develops shortened, validated audit tools. A version of the IMI was used in the Twin Cities Walking Study...

The purpose of this study was to determine 1) the test-retest reliability of adult accelerometer-measured physical activity, and 2) how data processing decisions affect physical activity levels and test-retest reliability. 143 people wore the ActiGraph accelerometer for 2 7-day periods, 1 to 4 weeks apart. Five algorithms, varying nonwear criteria...

The prevalence of overweight and obesity in the US population has risen dramatically in recent years. To try to explain this, some studies have examined the association between the built environment and obesity (measured using the body mass index (BMI)). Most of these studies have not sought to identify causal effects, but rather correlations. Data...

There is increasing interest in Health Impact Assessment in planning. This paper describes the results of different approaches to health impact assessment (HIA) conducted in 10 municipalities and one county in Minnesota. The paper outlines the HIA processes, outputs, and short-term outcomes concluding that it is important to engage a diverse group...

It is widely agreed that planners should be aiming to create cities that are more ecologically sensitive. Governments, developers, planners, and designers almost everywhere claim to be doing just that. What does this mean, however? We argue that planners have been promoting a compact and efficient approach to green development, on the basis of a co...

Do planned residential enclaves of like-minded people undermine metropolitan diversity and regional planning, or do they provide a supportive base of services and assistance for specific population groups? In this paper, we propose a classification of enclaves related to level of planning, resident choice, income mix, and the ways in which the encl...

How can people be encouraged to walk or cycle more? This article draws on the results of over 300 well-designed empirical studies to provide guidance on how specific strategies can influence walking or cycling for travel: community design, infrastructure availability, infrastructure quality, programming, pricing, and combined strategies. Urban envi...

To examine neighbourhood food environments, adolescent nutrition and weight status. Cross-sectional, observational study. Minneapolis/St. Paul metropolitan region, Minnesota, USA. A total of 349 adolescents were recruited to the study. Participants completed 24 h dietary recalls and had their weight and height measured. They also reported demograph...

What are suburban technopoles like as places? This article examines the design and planning features of areas developed specifically to promote technological innovation focusing on cases in Japan that have been ranked highly as technological centers: Tsukuba, Izumi Park Town and Kansai Science City. Although different in age and the relationship be...

Where older people live and the resources available to them are key factors in their physical, mental, and social well-being and in the health of the natural environment. In this paper, we conceptualize residency in relation to contexts ranging from the micro (room) to the macro (region). We have chosen to focus on the United States because this en...

Health impact assessments (HIAs) provide an attractive approach for those interested in injecting health issues into planning processes. While HIAs have been mainly employed outside the United States and led by professionals from the public health field, they hold promise for addressing the important dimension of human health in planning. This arti...

The Corridor Housing Initiative (CHI), now the Corridor Development Initiative, in Minneapolis-St. Paul, is a collaborative process to assist planning, designing and developing higher density and affordable housing along major transit corridors. These locations provide access to transportation options, retail amenities, parks and job opportunities....

A significant amount of travel is undertaken to find food. This paper examines challenges in measuring access to food using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), important in studies of both travel and eating behavior. It compares different sources of data available including fieldwork, land use and parcel data, licensing information, commercial li...

How might an urban environment be evaluated visually? What different stories might be told when using different assessment techniques? Since the 1960s, researchers and others have developed a rich array of design evaluation approaches. This paper uses six different tools to measure three transit station area environments. Some focus mainly on visua...

How can planners more systematically incorporate health concerns into practical planning processes? This paper describes a suite of health impact assessment tools (HIAs) developed specifically for planning practice. Taking an evidence-based approach the tools are designed to fit into existing planning activities. The tools include: a short audit to...

Can the craft of planning take advantage of a growing body of planning-relevant research? Evidence-based practice proposes a better connection between research and professional work, but raises several concerns about the character of valid evidence, the strength and clarity of planning research, and inequalities in the available resources for integ...

This paper explores three controversial and large-scale attempts by architects to build more attractive suburban areas: Cumbernauld in Scotland (key designs constructed in the 1950s and 1960s), Irvine in California (key designs from the 1960s and 1970s onward), and Poundbury in England (key designs created in the 1980s and built from the 1990s on)....

Research into the effects of neighborhood environments on social and behavioral characteristics is threatened by inattention to some methodological obstacles, including the recruitment of a representative sample of resident participants. Although sampling is relatively straightforward, actual recruitment is not. The authors present the recruitment...

As issues of traffic congestion, obesity, and environmental conservation receive increased attention globally and in the US, focus turns to the role that walking and cycling can play in mitigating such problems. This enthusiasm has created a need for evidence on the degree to which policies to increase walking and cycling travel have worked. This p...

This special issue explores emerging research agendas in planning. It brings together scholars from diverse schools working on new areas of research and application in urban design and planning. Emergent research agendas include both novel areas of research and important shifts in the direction of a research area. The challenge for planning schools...

This article examines the influence of the neighborhood environment on blood profiles, percent body fat, blood pressure, and the metabolic syndrome (MetS) in adolescents. One hundred and eighty-eight adolescents (10-16 yr) agreed to have a fasting blood sample drawn in addition to measures of weight, height, percent fat, and blood pressure. A MetS...

Physical inactivity is one of the most important public health issues in the U.S. and internationally. Increasingly, links are being identified between various elements of the physical-or built-environment and physical activity. To understand the impact of the built environment on physical activity, the development of high-quality measures is essen...

This paper classifi es designed comprehensive districts and towns, focusing on those built from the end of World War II through the early 21st century. While comparatively rare, such models are a dominant part of the intellectual history of urban design, physical planning, and urban development. Identifying the range of such designed communities he...

University of Minnesota School of Public health, USA.

We examine whether specific types of people are more sensitive to the built environment when making a decision to walk or engage in other physical activity. Over 700 participants from 36 environmentally diverse, but equivalent-sized neighborhoods or focus areas responded to a survey, kept a travel diary, and wore an accelerometer for seven days. Su...

The Twin Cities Walking Study measured the associations of built environment versus socioeconomic and psychosocial variables with total physical activity and walking for 716 adults. This article reports on the test-retest reliability of the survey portion of the study. To test the reliability of the study measures, 158 respondents completed measure...

The purpose of this study was to explore how exposure to alcohol outlets (around home and school) influenced alcohol use among 242 high-school students (mean age 16.4, 48.8% male, 93.4% White). Results found no relationship between alcohol outlet exposure, using a measure of both distance to and density around students' homes and schools, and alcoh...

In the past few decades, Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) has emerged as a popular and influential planning concept in the United States. Physical design is an important aspect of making TOD projects work as it is a crucial means of coordinating relatively intensive land uses and multiple transportation modes. This paper analyzes seven American T...

To grow and prosper in an era when university departments are increasingly assessed comparatively and critically by national systems of accountability and ranking, planning schools need data that reflect the wide range of activities undertaken by planning educators. Recent developments surrounding planning school assessment in U.S. planning schools...

Background: There is a paucity of research examining associations between walking and environmental attributes that are more modifiable in the short term, such as car parking availability, access to transit, neighborhood traffic, walkways and trails, and sidewalks. Methods: Adults were recruited between April 2004 and September 2006 in the Minne...

Do people walk more, or less, depending on the physical character of their residential areas rather than merely their individual characteristics? This paper reports findings for the Twin Cities, Minnesota, about how walking and total physical activity are affected by street pattern, `pedestrian-oriented' infrastructure and amenities, and mixed use...

What makes a great program in architecture? This paper grapples with a key dilemma faced by architecture programs seeking to be recognized on campus and among their peers. How do schools position themselves to be perceived as programs valued by their universities, faculties, and students, distinguished in ways that represent important dimensions of...

In 1989 two public-private coalitions were formed to help plan and develop physical and social infrastructure in Rouse Hill, a minicity of a quarter of a million people for the northwest fringe of Sydney, Australia. Brought together at the instigation of state government bureaucrats, the coalitions were lobby groups and alternative providers of ser...

In a world of design solutions, how important is research to innovation? This paper describes how innovation intersects with (1) urban design practice and (2) the work of research universities. When innovation is largely stylistic, design practice sensibilities may well be more useful than research skills. But when innovation requires new data or n...

Green master planned communities save energy and money and avoid social exclusion. Recent samples of these communities have shown new methods and practices. For instance, Civano in Arizona, demonstrate a range of approaches from being a new town that mix new urbanism and ecological design. It featured energy efficient, adobe-style housing, surround...

Many agree that increasing physical activity will improve public health. This paper reports on empirical findings on the relationship between the density of the residential environment, walking and total physical activity. Using multiple objective and self-reported measures for 715 participants in the US, and improved techniques for sampling and an...

A growing body of health and policy research suggests residential neighborhood density and street connectivity affect walking and total physical activity, both of which are important risk factors for obesity and related chronic diseases. The authors report results from their methodologically novel Twin Cities Walking Study; a multilevel study which...

DESIGN FOR HEALTH is a collaboration between the University of Minnesota and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota that serves to bridge the gap between the emerging research base on community design and healthy living with the every-day

Tenure committees and thesis preparation seminars around the world are raising questions about the character of research in the environmental design fields. What forms can such research take? How can it be judged? How is it related to the body of work known as scholarship? This paper examines these questions. Research engages with broadly important...

Researchers and policymakers increasingly identify active living-including walking and bicycling for travel and recreation-as a potential strategy to increase rates of physical activity in the United States. Understanding the impact of the built environment on physical activity levels requires reliable methods to measure potentially relevant built...

University-based urban centres come in several types: research centres, university-based firms, community advocacy centres, extension agencies, studios, clearinghouses and umbrella or convening organizations. They all potentially link an innovative or educational milieu in the university to wider urban processes, though not all live up to this pote...