Alter the Built Environment (Physical Environment)

Before You Begin

• Understand healthy community design. Before your coalition dives into this work, you should build a shared understanding and knowledge base of what healthy community design is. Consider these resources as a starting point and include young people as well as people with varying abilities into the shared learning experience. 

Resources:

• Built Environment webpage at Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment offers up to date resources, funding ideas, newsletters, and Built Environment staff contacts.

• Elements of a Healthy, Equitable Community from ChangeLab Solutions provides a high level overview of why healthy, equitable communities are essential.  

• Making Healthy Places: Designing and Building for Well-Being, Equity, and Sustainability. (n.d.). Nature and Health. 

• Better By Design Building Colorado Communities with Health in Mind is a resource provided by the Colorado Health Institute. This resource highlights how the built environment and health can co-exist and the relationship between the two. 

• Identify key decision makers such as elected officials, community advocates, professionals working in the community, youth, disability advocates and those with lived experiences, as well as those with power involved in work around this topic. “Nothing About Us, Without Us” should be the mentality when working within this strategy. Consider any recognition of time or stipends that decision makers may receive for their involvement.   

Resources:

• Identify ways that you will be connecting with youth. Consider youth advisory committees, visiting schools, partnering with youth leadership and service organizations.

  1. 1. 1. 1. • Ask yourself: How are these efforts helping youth feel more connected to their community?  How is our organization measuring if changes to the built environment in the community are providing opportunities for youth to feel engaged, heard, empowered and having a voice? 

              • Ask youth how their environment (both built, natural and the people in them) makes them feel welcome, included and appreciated or excluded, discouraged to be there, etc. Getting direct about the question will get the most telling and profound responses. Provide multiple ways to submit those responses.

• Efforts to change the physical and built environment of a community often involve governmental and non-governmental partners (e.g., city planners, legislators, businesses, parks and recreation and community leaders or activists (those not elected), faith-based organizations, student councils, service groups) so their involvement may be critical for your coalition’s success. The right decision-makers need to be at the table and willing to do their part. If you do not have relationships or representation from these key decision makers, you may consider forming those partnerships as your first step. Some tips to forming partnerships:

•  A cup of coffee can go a long way in building connections and sharing in conversations about a built environment project.

• Consider asking people you know for introductions. 

• Consider thinking outside of the box when forming new partnerships - who is not represented or have you not considered previously? Think multi-sector partnerships.

Examples of this may include: meeting with individuals and organizations who specialize in this area to ask them what helps and if they would like to join the coalition or setting up calls with decision makers to see if they are willing to use their position of influence to support your efforts via implementing policies or reallocating resources.

Resources:

• The Community Toolbox offers a list of important partners to engage in your efforts.

  • CDC’s Active People, Healthy Nation’s Tools for Action webpage provides specifics for how many types of partners from Arts & Culture, Parks and Recreation, to Transportation have a role in encouraging built environment changes for physical activity, which uses complementary strategies to healthy community design.

• Colorado communities can learn more about local and municipal comprehensive plans for land use already drafted throughout the state. These plans may help your coalition understand key partners and existing plans and efforts happening within this area.

  • ChangeLab Solutions offers a Long Range Planning for Health Equity and Prosperity to further understand how to connect comprehensive (or long range) plans to public health.

• The National Academy of Community Organizers offers A Guide to Power Analysis in Community Organizing, which can help coalitions understand where power sits within a community around a particular issue.

• Understand how systemic inequities impact the physical environment of communities. Neighborhood socio-economic status is linked to the availability and quality of community spaces and programs for youth, so as a coalition, you should seek to understand the connection to ensure your efforts do not further entrench inequities.

Resources:

• Learn about the historic impact systemic racism has had on the placement of parks and open spaces in the Prevention Institute’s publication “Changing the Landscape: People, Parks, and Power”. The report suggests a framework communities should use to "guide the park and green space equity movement’s approach to changing policies and systems, with a focus on scaling up to achieve population-level impacts."

• Your coalition should also consider the potential impacts of changes to the built environment on gentrification. The Urban Land Institute’s Colorado chapter offers guidance for equitable revitalization. 

• As a part of their ‘Five Building Blocks for Racial Equity’, the Race Matters Institute of JustPartners, Inc. offers a free guide on conducting a Racial Equity Backmap, which helps groups and individuals consider and identify the various drivers of a given inequity.

• Consider using an Equity Impact Assessment to better explore and understand such consequences. Race Forward offers free resources.

• 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. • The Government Alliance on Race and Equity offers Racial Equity Toolkit An Opportunity to Operationalize Equity.

• Support or lead efforts to assess your community’s environment. The identification and examination of the physical characteristics of housing, schools, and community areas (e.g., parks, business areas, public transportation hubs) is an important initial step to identify the specific needs of a community. A variety of tools and processes such as walk audits and tool kits exist to help communities assess and understand the built environment around them by collecting information such as sidewalk availability, green space access, land use, and traffic volume. When determining what tools and processes work for your community, consider making sure folks in your coalition have access to pre-exisiting data about your community that does not have to be purchased. Examples include: local public health data as well as parks and recreation data, GIS data, open access data, or using AI as a tool to gather information from specific entities. Be open to new technologies, such as virtual reality, for gathering input from youth regarding environments that make them feel welcome, connected, and engaged. 

These tools can provide baseline information, identify existing barriers and concerns, help assess health outcomes, and identify suitable changes to invest resources in. Make sure to have folks on your coalition have access to pre-existing data about your community that doesn't have to be purchased, is part of public access, and data that's already been collected. Local public health, local parks and recreation, GIS Data, Open access data, utilization of AI to gather info for you from specific entities. 

Resources:

• The CDC offers resources for understanding and measuring the built environment, including Active Communities Toolkit.

• One tool your community can use is Photovoice, a process that involves community members using photography to visually communicate their experiences and environment. Guidance is provided in the following:

  • 1. • 1. • 1. • • Community Tool Box Implementing Photovoice in Your Community

                   • Facilitators Toolkit for a Photovoice Project 

            • Storytelling can be an effective way to share the everyday experiences of people in your community, which can create powerful messaging and examples to share with decision makers. 

              1. • • Telling Your Prevention Story (1-hour, online module)

                   • Communities Talk: The Value of Storytelling to Enhance Prevention, this webinar provides examples of why storytelling is an important tool in prevention efforts. 

                   • Navigating Routt County: Observations of a Local Coalition is a resource that provides an overview of how a local Built Environment Coalition in Routt County conducted an inclusive community scan (a.k.a. walk audit)

                   • Storytelling Working Group, this resource released in Next100 Colorado provides stories about using outdoor spaces to build a more justice-oriented conservation and outdoor recreation movement.

                   • Jackson County Fairground Master plan highlights an example of how a shared multi-generational space was revamped with community input in Walden, CO. 

• As discussed within other strategies, your coalition can also help facilitate community mapping (sometimes called “asset mapping”). Community mapping is a data-driven process that results in a visualization of community resources (social, cultural, economic), assets, concerns, and opportunities located within a community. Mapping activities can help communities identify specific locations that need physical improvement. The are numerous online resources that include a “how to” guide, as well as case studies showcasing how the community mapping process has been used in communities:

  • 1. • 1. • 1. • Participatory Asset Mapping Toolkit

                 • Mapping Our Common Ground

                 • Community Mapping project 

                 • There are many resources online with instructions on how to use Google Maps, a free and easily shareable online resource, to facilitate community mapping.

• Additionally, hot spot mapping is a data-driven activity that supports communities by identifying spaces that are safe and unsafe and encouraging conversations about how to address areas of concern. 

  • 1. • 1. • 1. • The National Institute of Justice’s report, “Mapping Crime: Understanding Hot Spots” is a comprehensive guide to hot spot mapping.

                 • The Nevada Coalition to End Domestic and Sexual Violence (NCEDSV) also has a quick Hotspot Mapping How-To Guide. 

                 • Watch a Colorado community that has utilized hot spot mapping here and read more about the use of hot spot mapping in Colorado here. 

• Measure “network connectivity”, or how easily people can travel from one place to another within a community via a variety of transportation methods such as public transit (bus or train), cars, bikes, walking, etc. Resources to understand this indicator specifically for youth include:

  • 1. • 1. • 1. • Safe Routes to School Walkability Assessment

                 • Safe Routes to Parks Walk Audit Tool

                 • Walk Friendly Community Assessment for Teens

       • Additionally another helpful resource for all ages: 

         1. • 1. • Pedestrian Dignity is a resource for advocacy for pedestrian travel

                   • Consider why folks may choose to or are limited to pedestrian modes of mobility (age, ability, cost, choice, etc.) 

                 • AARP Bike Audit Tool Kit: A Self-Service Guide to Assessing a Community’s Bikeability is a free resource to help your coalition do a bike audit in your community 

       • Similarly, to measure walkability, you can use Walk Score, which rates and measures walkability based on the variety and distance of an address to educational, retail, food, entertainment, and recreational locations. It should be noted that, while Walk Score considers the number of destinations in an area, it does not take into account the quality of destinations, the aesthetics, or safety of the walking environment.

       • ParkScore and ParkServe are resources that can be used to measure the density of greenspace parks within a community. ParkScore looks at current acreage, investment, amenities, and access. ParkServe can be used to determine locations for future parks based on the greatest need. Colorado Parks and Wildlife partnered with the Trust for Public Land to conduct a 10-Minute Walk and 10-Mile Drive proximity analysis to open space, parks, trails, and water across the state. This tool can help identify areas that lack safe access to parks that are close to home. 

• Identify and support efforts to share voice and power with decision makers. To emphasize the Positive Youth Development approach, be sure to include young people in all activities as decision makers and facilitators, not solely as participants. Utilize active, engaging, participatory, hands on methods with youth to share their voice such as PLAYCE techniques. This could also include young people developing maps of physical or built spaces that are safe/unsafe, advising or developing the process for facilitation, co-facilitating the process, analyzing their own results, and presenting the results directly to their school administrators and/or community leaders. Diverse youth or community member representation is essential so that the data captured reflects the entire community’s experiences.

Resources:

• Working Together to Make Meaningful Change by Safe Routes Partnership.  This resource is for individuals, organizations, and government agencies that are working on community engagement in Colorado; it includes resources and tools to develop and deepen community engagement processes using a people-centered framework.

• Identify and support existing efforts to change your community’s physical environment. As discussed earlier, changes to the physical and built environment of a community can result in positive health impacts for all of its members, including youth. These efforts can range in scope and some may already be underway in your community. 

Resources:

• Active People, Healthy Nation (APHN) has a list of evidence-based community design strategies to increase access to physical activity across sectors and settings.

• Colorado Downtown Streets - This publication is meant to aid both Colorado communities and the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) in striking a balance between the many demands that face our downtown streets, particularly where a main street is also a state highway. It provides options for how to increase safety for all users across all modes of travel through creative and flexible design.

• Revitalizing Main Streets program enhances active transportation safety and strengthens the connection of people to main streets and central economic hubs. The program encourages physical activity and enhances local economic vitality in towns and cities across Colorado through funding infrastructure improvements to make walking and biking easy, yielding long-term benefits that bolster community connections.

• The Community Tool Box includes an entire chapter on changing the built environment, including examples of common activities and case studies of effective past efforts across the U.S. 

• Community Wellness Hubs: A Toolkit for Advancing Community Health and Well-Being Through Parks and Recreation contains evidence and practice-based strategies, resources, and case study examples to advance parks and recreation as Community Wellness Hubs.

• Placemaking is a creative way to demonstrate how built environment changes in a community could function; these often start as a “pilot” or “temporary” installment and can become permanent with community support and funding.

  • 1. 1. • • 1. 1. • For more placemaking resources, visit the Project for Public Spaces website.

• The Community Tool Box also specifically covers establishing neighborhood beautification programs and provides resources and case studies.

• Useful Community Development provides guidance and information on community beautification. 

• CDPHE’s Built Environment team has resources for insight, data and engagement ideas.  

• National Park Service Healthy Parks Health People (updated in 2021)- highlights the movement that the National Park Service is taking towards connecting people to their parks as a health resource and promoting ‘nature as medicine’. 

• National Recreation and Parks Association offers a Community Wellness Hubs Toolkit containing evidence and practice-based strategies, case studies, and resources to support promotion of parks and recreation spaces as wellness hubs. 

• Great Outdoors Colorado (GOCO) - this organization supports outdoor organizations through grants to open up and protect spaces in our communities and state. Consider applying for a grant with this organization or partnering with organizations GOCO supports to implement change in your community. 

• Generation Wild - this organization supports connecting young people in Colorado to outdoor spaces. It offers up resources on parenting strategies to connect young people to the outdoors as well as promotes Generation Wild communities across Colorado if your coalition is looking for opportunities to get involved with. 

• State Park Pass Loan Program - this is a loan program offered in partnership between the Colorado State Library and Colorado Parks & Wildlife. 

• Organize neighborhood clean-up days to increase community buy-in for beautification projects. Neighborhood clean-up days involve convening a group of people to clean up all or part of a community. Such efforts have the potential to bring about a number of positive outcomes which can lead to longer sustained built environment changes. They also serve as a great opportunity to build buy-in and harness civic engagement in the community. 

Resources:

• The Community Tool Box contains a section on Conducting Neighborhood Cleanup Programs, which provides guidance for individuals and organizations interested in these efforts.

• Keep America Beautiful has a wide variety of resources and tools for neighborhood beautification projects and ideas. 

• Support existing or facilitate efforts to improve transportation safety through art, complete streets, and the streetscape design within your community. Improving the design of streetscapes (e.g., roadway designs) provides benefits to an entire community, by allowing pedestrians, bicyclists, transit riders, and motorists to all share and use streets within a community. Examples of streetscape improvements include increased street lighting, enhanced street landscaping, increased sidewalk connectivity, bicycling infrastructure, street crossing safety features, and traffic calming measures like pedestrian only areas. Research has shown such efforts can improve a community’s safety while also increasing a sense of community among residents.

Resources:

• County Health Rankings & Roadmaps offers an overview of this approach and compiles a list of implementation resources.

• Vision Zero is a movement to reduce traffic fatalities to zero. Many strategies used in Vision Zero require community engagement from people of all ages and abilities to improve transportation, access and safety. 

• Smart Growth America offers resources and guidance specifically on educating stakeholders on policy solutions to support improvements in streetscape design.

• The state of Colorado released “ Colorado Downtown Street: A Tool for Communities, Planners, and Engineers” which is designed to aid Colorado communities in improving streetscape design.

  • 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. • The Green Infrastructure Guide to Downtown Colorado introduces and identifies green infrastructure best management practices for downtown streets. It is an expansion of the Colorado Downtown Streets publication and considers stormwater management and the benefits of adding vegetation on downtown streets.

• Smart Growth America offers up a resource on how Colorado spaces have collaborated with the National Complete Streets coalition to support complete streets in 3 CO cities. 

• Bloomberg has an extensive "how to guide" for creating asphalt art projects and has even conducted studies demonstrating the effectiveness of asphalt art as a transportation safety strategy.

• Safe Routes to Parks Resource Guide provides professionals with resources to plan, design, and implement safe and accessible biking, walking, and wheelchair rolling to parks. 

• Educate community partners on the benefits of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED). CPTED is a specific approach to designing safety and security into the environment of a specific area focusing on five areas: 1) natural surveillance, 2) access control, 3) territorial reinforcement, 4) activity support, and 5) maintenance. Research supports its ability to improve safety within a community. 

Resources

• Learn more about CPTED from the International CPTED Association and the National Crime Prevention Council.

• Everytown discusses community success stories in their report “Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design”.

• CPTED best practices are described in “Best Practices for Using Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design in Weed and Seed Sites”.

A photo example of "Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design" below. 

• Support existing and/or facilitate efforts to develop and implement climate health adaptation plans, such as heat action plans, to help communities prepare for the health effects of climate change.

Resources

• Apply the CDC Building Resilience Against Climate Effects (BRACE) Framework. This is a five step process that includes anticipating vulnerabilities, projecting the disease burden, assessing public health interventions, developing adaptation plans, and evaluating impacts. 

• Integrate Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion using the Climate Change and Health Playbook. The CDC’s resource page on climate and community health has many resources including toolkits on how to talk about the impacts of climate and health and how to create a community coordinated effort to address concerns.

• Visit CDC’s HeatRisk Tool to access local heat risk data and resources. You can also visit CDPHE’s Heat and Health webpage for more information.

• 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. • Consider opportunities to support cooling centers, clean air shelters, and resilience hubs, which are physical spaces that serve as community centers for education, services, and community capacity. They can enhance community resilience, reduce burdens on local emergency response teams, improve access to public health resources and services, and distribute resources and funding to priority communities and those that need them the most.

                 • Decarbonizing the Built Environment Town Hall with Durango Legislators; November 1 2020. This town hall recording discusses how to achieve carbon-neutral buildings to combat climate change and a building’s overall effect on the environment. 

                 • STEM offers up a resource Let’s Talk Climate! Bridging Climate Justice Learning and Action Across School, Home, and Community to help in discussions of how climate change and adaptations may impact young people and their spaces. 

1. David-Ferdon, C., Vivolo-Kantor, A. M., Dahlberg, L. L., Marshall, K. J., Rainford, N. & Hall, J. E. (2016). A Comprehensive Technical Package for the Prevention of Youth Violence and Associated Risk Behaviors. Atlanta, GA: National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
2. Center for Community Health and Development. (n.d.). Chapter 26, Section 1: Overview of Changing the Physical Structure of the Community. University of Kansas. Retrieved April 2022, from the Community Tool Box: http://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/assessment/assessing-community-needs-and-resources/conduct-concerns-surveys/main.