30 Oct Building Healthy Environments Small and Large

Yesterday I had the opportunity to gain insights into both very small and very large-scale healthy built environments. In the morning, I visited Eco-Wise to check out their tiny home on a trailer. Then at lunchtime, I joined the Central Texas chapter of the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU-CTX) for a presentation on healthy neighborhood and city design. The key to a healthy lifestyle, public health experts say lies in an environment that makes physical activity and time outdoors irresistible. Both tiny houses and walkable communities deliver on that.

Starting on the small scale, the Eco-Wise Tiny Home is healthy for people in two significant ways: its size and its materials of construction. With only a few hundred square feet of indoor space, a tiny house causes life to naturally spill out the door into the adventure that awaits. Whether it's learning to do laundry outside, or moving your little house on a trailer to a spot near great hiking trails. With so little inside, the outdoors appears big and inviting. In addition to encouraging outdoor activity, the Eco-Wise house provides a healthy interior and planet-friendly structure. The use of metal and natural building materials and coatings means healthy indoor air plus it's almost completely recyclable/compostable.

After investigating healthy design on the micro-scale, I switched to the macro-scale. Dr. Richard Jackson, Chair of Environmental Health Sciences at UCLA addressed the need for healthy neighborhood and city planning at the CNU-CTX luncheon. Our current neighborhoods and cities in the US are primarily designed for personal motorized vehicles. This means we've essentially engineered physical activity out of our lives. The result is rampant rates of obesity, type II diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and use of medications for mental health. The root cause of all these health issues lies in poor urban planning and lack of public transportation. The solution centers around higher-density communities with integrated green space and access to goods/services people want within walking distance. Dr. Jackson asserted that if we keep our feet moving, we'll have healthier, higher-quality lives. The PBS documentary series he hosted, Designing Healthy Communities, goes into much more detail on the issues and the solutions to our urban layout woes.

Both eco-tiny houses and a shift to green, population-dense, walkable urban spaces are both important in creating neighborhoods and cities where everyone can thrive. The discussion about housing and urban planning in relation to public health is alive and lively. This gives me hope that we can create a sustainable future beginning now.