The environment that we construct affects both humans and our natural world in myriad ways. There is a pressing need to create healthy places and to reduce the health threats inherent in places already built. However, there has been little awareness of the adverse effects of what we have constructed-or the positive benefits of well designed built environments.

This book provides a far-reaching follow-up to the pathbreaking Urban Sprawl and Public Health, published in 2004. That book sparked a range of inquiries into the connections between constructed environments, particularly cities and suburbs, and the health of residents, especially humans. Since then, numerous studies have extended and refined the book's research and reporting. Making Healthy Places offers a fresh and comprehensive look at this vital subject today.

There is no other book with the depth, breadth, vision, and accessibility that this book offers. In addition to being of particular interest to undergraduate and graduate students in public health and urban planning, it will be essential reading for public health officials, planners, architects, landscape architects, environmentalists, and all those who care about the design of their communities.

Like a well-trained doctor, Making Healthy Places presents a diagnosis of--and offers treatment for--problems related to the built environment. Drawing on the latest scientific evidence, with contributions from experts in a range of fields, it imparts a wealth of practical information, with an emphasis on demonstrated and promising solutions to commonly occurring problems.

SynergiCity: Reinventing the Postindustrial City proposes a new and invigorating vision of urbanism, architectural design, and urban revitalization in twenty-first-century America. Culling transformative ideas from the realms of historic preservation, sustainability, ecological urbanism, and the innovation economy, Paul Hardin Kapp and Paul J. Armstrong present a holistic vision for restoring industrial cities suffering from population decline back into stimulating and productive places to live and work.

 

With a particular emphasis on the Rust Belt of the American Midwest, SynergiCity argues that cities such as Detroit, St. Louis, and Peoria must redefine themselves to be globally competitive. This revitalization is possible through environmentally and economically sustainable restoration of industrial areas and warehouse districts for commercial, research, light industrial, and residential uses. The volume's expert researchers, urban planners, and architects draw on the redevelopment successes of other major cities--such as the American Tobacco District in Durham, North Carolina, and the Milwaukee River Greenway--to set guidelines and goals for reinventing and revitalizing the postindustrial landscape.

 

Contributors are Paul J. Armstrong, Donald K. Carter, Lynne M. Dearborn, Norman W. Garrick, Mark Gillem, Robert Greenstreet, Craig Harlan Hullinger, Paul Hardin Kapp, Ray Lees, Emil Malizia, John O. Norquist, Christine Scott Thomson, and James Wasley.