Shaping Healthy Communities
The shape we give our city, in turn shapes us.
The Nashville Civic Design Center, in partnership with the Metro Public Health Department, announces Shaping Healthy Communities: Nashville.
Scheduled for publication in Spring 2013 by Vanderbilt University Press, the book will build on the long-term vision for our city set forth in The Plan of Nashville (2005), but focus more specifically on designing our built environment to foster better health among our citizens.
In the past decade, public health officials have established ever stronger links between the qualities of the built environment and the startling rise of preventable diseases, e.g. obesity, type II diabetes, heart disease and asthma. With a wealth of data, information and tools to inform policy, development, planning and design, the Shaping Healthy Communities project will be a catalyst to transform Nashville into the “Healthiest City in the South.”
Shaping Healthy Communities: Nashville will result in the following products:
• An Action Plan to guide city policy makers, planners and communities, in adapting Nashville’s built environments to
benefit our cities’ health, that will be used to inform Nashville’s General Plan.
• Designing Action: An international design competition to explore new concepts for imagining redevelopment focused on
an active lifestyle and alternative sports in Nashville.
• Living the Plan of Nashville 2012, annual luncheon featuring keynote speaker Dr. Richard Jackson
• Faces of Nashville, Exhibition Downtown Library Jan – June, photographs and interviews capturing Nashvillians
experience of health, transportation the built environment. Corresponding lectures and events.
• Nashville HEALS, Healthy Eating Active Living Summit 2013, topic health and the built environment
• Shaping Healthy Communities, a narrative book published by Vanderbilt University Press in Spring 2013, with vignettes of Nashville’s built environment today; personal narratives of life in Nashville’s neighborhoods, and the Action Plan for the short-, mid-, and long-term re-design of Nashville’s neighborhoods to promote health and well-being. An attractive and informative publication, the book will appeal to a wide lay and professional audience, providing sidebars on key built environment and health topics by local and national experts; info-graphics on the impact of built environments on health; images of existing health promoting built designs; local resources, and extensive empirical references. Book publication to be followed with and supported by speaking engagements, special emphasis given to relationship between book content and General Plan goals.
• Video shorts will offer a visual and auditory account of Nashville’s current built environments; visions for the future design of Nashville neighborhoods; and action plans for community members, leaders, and officials to make those visions a reality.
With a wealth of data, information, and tools to inform policy, development, planning and design, the Shaping Healthy Communities: Nashville project will be the catalyst to transform Nashville into the “Healthiest City in the South.” With action plans grounded in the geographic, fiscal, policy and political realities of the city, Nashville will have the tools to improve on Tennessee’s rankings of least active state, with third highest obesity prevalence, in the nation. Our goal is to ensure that our citizens can live out their lives fully— from birth through their golden years—in each and every neighborhood in the city.
Shaping Healthy Cities Nashville in the press
CAN NASHVILLE DESIGN HEALTHIER CITIZENS? Monday, October 3, 2011 - Christine Kreyling
DEAN PUSHES OBESITY FIGHT - Sunday, October 02, 2011 - Tom Wilemon, Tennessean reporter
For questions or suggestions on the Shaping Healthy Cities Project, please contact Gary Gaston
