America's built environment has centered around the growth of the suburb for the past 60 or so years. At the time of it's conception, the idea was to get out of the city, to separate from work, and to own a place that you could call your own. This dream relied on private transportation, a remodeled infrastructure based on the automobile and the separation of the home from daily amenities such as grocers and entertainment. This paradigm shift has been incredibly lucrative for the construction, oil, and auto industries and has fueled much economic growth, but as time has shown the costs have proven to be steep, as America's people have grown increasingly heavier and been exposed to far more health problems centered around exposure to noxious emissions from factories, cars, construction and food production/consumption.
A paradigm shift has begun, lead in part by researchers like Dr. Richard Jackson, a professor and chair of environmental health sciences at UCLA's School of Public Health. The focus of the shift is back onto walkable, urbanized, mixed-use environments. Admittedly, this kind of renovation is a hard sell in the face of entrenched business interests that profit from the suburban, individual-oriented environment. Perhaps one of our saving graces is that we have failed to properly maintain this infrastructure, and the costs of repaving highways, reconstructing bridges, and modernizing our traffic grids in both intra/interstate settings may not be worth the cost and continued degradation of public health.
Check out this article for more details: http://chronicle.com/article/A-Scientist-Pushes-Urban/130404/
