Walkability, health, and workforce stats

[Midori]

There's a lot of talk about walkability (who doesn't like that?) and health, but it's hard to sell to the body funding the sidewalks unless you can tie it to economic development. Anyone have stats on how healthy populations affect the bottom line? I'm thinking there has to be a workforce health line on site selectors' criteria sheet, right? Where would I find evidence on that? It seems so axiomatic that unhealthy populations cost the community money that I'm a little baffled at how to put that in figures on a presentation.

[wahday]

You might look at this study.

Not sure if it directly addresses the issues you are after except to the extent that higher healthcare costs impact employers’ bottom line. But the study essentially identifies health, transportation and environmental benefits associated with better transportation systems, of which sidewalks are an integral part.

The challenge with things like this that are less tangible cost-wise and where the cost-burden is often externalized is that it is hard for people and businesses to see the direct line between, say, sidewalks, and a cost like, say, higher taxes. Environmental concerns often fall into this same category. Who “pays the price” for dirty air? If it doesn’t show up on the financial statements, its often not considered a “real” concern. Or at least not something businesses should be paying for.

A fairly clear argument could be made linking not just actual pedestrian safety, but the FEELING of safety on the part of walkers. Depending on the nature of the business areas impacted, this could be a pretty major concern for promoting the area as safe and welcoming for shoppers.

[Gotta Speakup]

As far as I know, there has been studies quantifying the economic vaue of the health effects of the built environment, but there was a study I seem to recall that found for every one point increase in a place's Walkscore, housing values went up by $4000.

[ColoGI]

There's a lot of talk about walkability (who doesn't like that?) and health, but it's hard to sell to the body funding the sidewalks unless you can tie it to economic development. Anyone have stats on how healthy populations affect the bottom line? I'm thinking there has to be a workforce health line on site selectors' criteria sheet, right? Where would I find evidence on that? It seems so axiomatic that unhealthy populations cost the community money that I'm a little baffled at how to put that in figures on a presentation.

There's not much out there. The way that I do it is I show my preferred suite of stated preference surveys and then show some articles that show increased property values in such neighborhoods. Thing is though, the typical new fad of retail underneath housing leaves a lot of vacancies. Everywhere. Some years ago when I practiced in Seattle, it was almost a joke how long it took for ground floor retail to fill, and the vacancy rate is still high. The US has 10-25x the retail floor area as any other country, and with the recession having no end in sight, its a hard sell to knowledgeable folk.

[Midori]

For context, my metro area recently landed on the top-10 list of most overweight areas in the nation. Our rates of obesity and diabetes are sky-high.

The municipalities here are wanting very badly to attract business, any business. The area has a nice, low cost of living, pretty low labor cost, great quality of life overall. But the education levels are generally below average, and officials realize that's a minus. What I'd like to propose to them is that the health numbers are also a minus--companies looking to locate jobs in a community actually care about that metric because it affects their cost of doing business when the workforce has poor health.

[mike gurnee]

My major point would be safety, perhaps starting with a safe routes to schools program. I would mention health as a side effect. Just my experiences with areas like yours.

[Midori]

Ok, new direction:

If you were designing a checklist or scoring rubric for a "healthy community", what might you include? Looking for points like:

• Requires sidewalks
• has a pedestrian/bike path traffic plan
• requires or incentivizes bike parking
• requires or incentivizes passive recreation offsets
• has at least ___ miles of walking/biking trails existing in the community
• has adequate (?) public recreation facilities available at low/no cost
• quality school athletic programs
• city-wide smoking ban

What else?

[Hceux]

I'm currently reading "Straphangers" by Taras Grescoe. It may be of some use for you to gather some more information pertinent to your inquiry.

[JNL]

As far as I know, there has been studies quantifying the economic vaue of the health effects of the built environment, but there was a study I seem to recall that found for every one point increase in a place's Walkscore, housing values went up by $4000.

Might be this one?