Where are the suburbs in urban Active Design Guidelines?

Introduction: A growing policy focus is on guidelines that encourage healthy lifestyles through environmental design. One archetypal example is New York City’s Active Design Guidelines (ADGs), with similar guidelines being published by other globally-leading conurbations, such as Toronto and Melbourne. These guidelines typically contain strategies for a diverse range of dense urban conditions that often do not seem relevant to suburban environments.

Methods: Active cross-disciplinary analysis and comparison of recently published active design guidelines in New York, Melbourne, and Toronto specifically evaluating their relevance and applicability to dominant suburban conditions.

Findings: Many of the factors discussed in ADGs centre around planning elements such as density, active transport, and tenure in an urban context, and largely omit the suburban perspective, despite the significant proportion of residents who live and work outside of urban cores. The lack of suburb-relevant guidelines makes it difficult to tailor improvements to address the rising prevalence of chronic diseases, such as diabetes and obesity, arising from suburban lifestyles.

Conclusions: The gaps identified in our analysis provides a platform for further thought, discussion, and study around how partnerships between planning and health can develop, disseminate and implement effective policies focused on making suburban neighbourhoods healthier places to live, work and play.