Healthy Architecture

The purpose of this web blog is to collect and dissemiate information about the health aspects of architecture and city planning.

I myself am a nursing student interested in Occupational & Environmental Health. I hope to someday become a Nurse Practioner and work to build healthier cities and buildings. Much of the Information collected on this site will directly relate to my Master's thesis in Nursing or else to other similar work being done in other cites facing similar public health issues.

The central questions revolve around: Are the cities we build helping to kill us? If so, in what way and to what degree? What are the greatest public health consequences of such architectural decisions? What solutions can be proposed that would help to work around the additional obstacles of the architecture which we have built and how can we build buildings and cities that are more healthful?

I look forward to any imput from anyone that relates to these goals.

To Start the Ball rolling... the aspects of public health that are being influenced by our archiecture include increased motorized transport dependence leading to increased air pollution which has been shown to effect both the respiratory system, contributing to an epidemic in pediatric asthma and allergies. Air pollution is significantly linked with increased cardiac incidents in patients with current cardiac problems. Transport dependence also has had a huge effect on the cardiovascular health of even individuals without heart problems, let me explain. Transport dependence and specifically zoning that nearly forces transport by private car for personal effeciency leads to decreased opportunity for household provisioning by nonmotorized vehicle - that is to say walking to the market or store.

This may seem a small thing, not reasonably being able to go shopping on foot once in awhile preferably on a daily basis, but the accumulated effects of our current architectural landscape for a vast majority of the public are vast and prevasive. They include increased pollution, loss of daily exercise as well as the the psychological and political benefits of daily public interaction. Leading to increased heart and lung diseases, obesity (1 in 3 children in America is overweight), hypertension (high blood pressure), type II diabetes, hypercholesterolemia (high blood cholesterol) and all the problems that this nasty little arch of disease eventually cause including stroke, heart attack, and in the case of obesity induced diabetes such problems as blindness, kidney failure, decreased circulation leading often to nonhealing ulcers and sometimes even limb amputations. People may laugh at the "Obesity Epidemic" (Like papa how did you survive the obesity epidemic? Oh son it was horrible, there was food everywhere, donuts, pastries, meats and all we could do was eat!) but the disabilities of obesity and diabetes will end up costing this country approximately $118 Billion THIS YEAR.

What do you get when you have an American public that has vast amounts of easily gotten high calorie food stuffs available without daily opportunity for casual exercise you have an ever softening American Middle. The human body is not made for such idleness and isolation as sleeping, waking up to sit in an isolated car to go sit in an isolated cube to go sit in an isolated car to go sit in an isolated livingroom where our isolated opinions of the pundits on tv go unchecked by conversation with our neighbors and our society becomes more obese, isolated, fearful of our fellow citizen and depressed. And you thought Architecture was only for intellectuals ....

Many good people are working on these problems and related health issues and I hope to eventually gather all the input that I can into this very worthy pursuit.

Best regards,


Thomas Fenaughty