This week’s readings focused on the livability theme and creating healthy habitats. Specifically, how the design of a neighborhood has an effect on the health and welfare of its citizens. The effect of a healthy living environment on people goes beyond the physical elements and additionally affects mental and emotional health. Building healthy habitats focuses on restoring the balance between people and the environment they live in. Building healthy habitats begins with clean air, clean water, access to healthy food, ability to socialize and have privacy, and access to routine physical activity, among other things. The readings this week focus on providing tools to analyze communities to find ways to provide these benefits to current communities as well as designing new developments that incorporate these ideas. Healthy habitats also include improving the air and living quality within buildings as well, providing ways to rid the air and water of toxins, and designing buildings that use less resources. There are many ways to improve both the exterior and interior environments of the neighborhoods in cities to develop encourage healthy habitats, people, communities, and prosperity overall.
Healthy habitats are a huge area of focus for me both personally, and because my wife has her Master’s of Public Health and is a Physician’s Assistant. Working in Baltimore and now in DC, healthy habitats have been a focus of both of ours. Individually, the components of healthy habitats are intuitive and simple. However, the combination and interdependence of many of the items is what makes achieving healthy habits exceptionally difficult. For example, currently, I am sitting in Zhuhai, China. The air quality is fair at best, the water quality is poor, the accessibility to both food and water is poor, and these then diminish the amount of physical activity that people do, diminish the overall health of the population as more diseases and toxins are presented and so on. In that sense, livable cities are really living bodies, that require attention, care, and attentiveness to survive. In addition, the implementation of these living things requires a thorough examination of the surroundings and each healthy habitat theme in an attempt to get each part to work as a whole. Like our bodies, livable cities need all of their components to work together, as a fully functioning machine. All it takes is one thing (or even the lack of one thing) to destroy the healthy habitat. The readings and other content provided numerous examples of cities that, by all standards, should have been teeming with life and activity, safe and secure, filled with green space and clean everything. However, in reality, they were all but dead because a single aspect was missing which created a domino effect. Like the examples that Jacobs gave about the squares in Philadelphia. Without diversity in functions, people stop coming through the squares, which means they go unmonitored, which means they attract the wrong types of people, which means they can breed crime, and so on. I see my focus neighborhood, Gateway, in a similar light. Historically, it was an active neighborhood, near the Anacostia branch of the Potomac, and an important and healthy town. However, as dirt ways turned into streets and industry sprang up along the river, the healthy habitat began to be destroyed. Now, more than ever, Gateway is isolated. It’s three main border streets are multiple lane, divided highways that prevent the comings and goings that are the heart of any city. Without the heart, it doesn’t matter how many green spaces, business, or anything else you have, the community won’t function. Then, add in the heavy industry, brownfields, sprawling and unlit parking lots, and unused sidewalks, and you get Gateway. Solving the disconnect between Gateway and the surrounding communities is essential to start rebuilding the healthy habitat that once existed.
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