Daily Score Blog

Hey, look!  Someone else cares about the link between neighborhood design and public health!

The Congress for the New Urbanism put out a big ol' report, covering a lot of the same ground we went over in our most recent Cascadia Scorecard.  The upshot -- there are a bajillion ways that neighborhood design might affect people's health; some of the connections are rock solid, while others are more speculative; and the big pathway for protecting health is through reduced vehicle travel -- which can ease car accidents and air pollution, while promoting exercise.

The neat thing here, though, is that the report was prepared specifically to help the green building community -- real estate developers, designers, architects, etc. -- figure out how to create neighborhoods that protect their residents' health.

Which is a big step forward.  Gradually, the academic research on the links between sprawl and health is being turned into practical lessons for the design world. And that should mean that, soon enough, we'll start seeing some progress in making neighborhoods healthier places to live.

** Late yesterday, the Montana supreme court unanimously upheld the lower court's decision to invalidate Initiative 154 because of pervasive fraud.

** Speaking of fraud, one of Howard Rich's key shell organizations, Chicago-based Americans for Limited Government, has been operating without a license to do business for almost 9 months. ALG has pumped well over a million in cash into the property ballot measures. It's not clear yet what the legal ramifications of this discovery will be.

** In Washington, support for Initiative 933 appears to be crumbling. Over at the Stranger's blog, Josh Feit says that new poll numbers show the measure down by 38 to 42. Just a few weeks ago, the same polling firm put the measure at 47 to 31 in favor. So support has weakend by 9 points, while opposition has vaulted up by 9. Undecided voters--still a whopping 20 percent--will make all the difference.

** Also in Washington, a new report (pdf) from the Economic Opportunity Institute puts some context on I-933's price tag of roughly $8 billion. What else could residents do with the money? How about this:

Currently there are 593,000 people in our state who lack health insurance. Health coverage for these people (through the BHP in which the state splits the cost of coverage with each individual) would cost the public $1.14 billion a year.

And the report has many other good examples of what you can buy for $8 billion. It's a great summary of the financial consequences.

UPDATE 10/31/06: A new poll has Idaho's Proposition 2 within the margin of error: 39 percent no; 37 percent yes. 24 percent are still undecided.