Integrating Land Use and Transportation Advocacy with Environmental Health Science in Somerville MA U.S.A.

摘要

Over several decades, activists in Somerville have worked to secure greater live work and green space balance, and healthier transportation alternatives, while also seeking to protect neighborhood character. We are a diverse median income community, next to booming Cambridge and Boston, with 60 languages spoken in our high school and less than 2 acres of public green space per 1000 residents. Per square mile, Somerville has 20,000 residents, mostly renters, and the state's greatest shortage of jobs relative to residents, and intensity of highway and diesel rail pollution. We have drawn on a history of environmental injustice and sought to expand our expertise in district design, planning, economic balance, transportation decision processes, and environmental health. Progress has been achieved via interaction with developers and government, litigation when necessary, and environmental health awareness. We have had some successes. Assembly Square, a large urban riverfront district planned to be big box retail and parking lots, is now redeveloping as a transit-oriented mixed-use district, with expanded riverfront green space and enhanced pedestrian and bicycle connections. It includes a developer funded subway stop, the first built in MA in three decades. It is also home to many new mixed income residents and the headquarters of PARTNERS Health, the largest hospital-based life sciences research group in the US. We have also secured state and Federal commitments to two new light rail branches, nearly half constructed, and completion of a transformative regional bike and path network. These projects represent over $2 billion in new healthy transportation assets. Finally, working with Tufts and other research universities, we have advanced understanding of transportation pollution and cardiovascular risk, as well as mitigation tactics. Nevertheless, further integration of health and environment into all design scales remains challenging and critically important.