T4America Blog

Metropolitan planning for healthier, safer, more prosperous regions

How can metro area planning agencies strengthen the local economy, improve public health outcomes for all of their residents, promote social equity and better protect the environment? Join us to hear the stories of how a handful of metro areas have found smart, data-driven ways to better conceive, select and build the transportation projects that will help meet those regional goals.

Flickr photo of an event by the Broward MPO. /photos/speakupbroward/24986492294

Metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) not only have responsibility to create regional plans that govern federal spending within their borders, but those in larger regions also control a limited amount of transportation funds directly. How they manage these responsibilities has a huge impact on the health of their residents and their access to jobs and other opportunities.

Can the people in neighborhoods more likely to be unhealthy easily get out for a walk or bike ride without having to traverse dangerous streets? Does an MPO effectively consider the impacts on regional air quality as they choose which projects to build? Is the area putting forward the most competitive possible walking and biking projects to win limited state or federal funding?

We’re excited to bring you the stories of a handful of MPOs that have good answers to all of these questions next week via a new series of short case studies and an accompanying webinar on Thursday, September 22 at 1 p.m. EDT. Register for the webinar with the link below.

Register for the webinar and you’ll be the first to receive a copy of these new case studies. If you work for an MPO, advocacy group or health organization and want to learn about ways to increase or improve the quantity and quality of active transportation projects in your region, this one is for you.

The MPOs we’re featuring have found ways to better use data and modeling tools to win funding for active transportation projects, standardize the process for building safer, more complete streets, or promote health and economic prosperity through transparent, data-driven decision-making. And we’re excited to share their stories with you.

On the webinar, we’ll have a short conversation with staff from four MPOs featured in the case studies. They’ll share details on their policies and programs, the transportation projects that resulted and the partnerships they had to forge to taste that success.

Join our team and experts on September 22nd at 1pm EDT. Register today!

Development of the case studies featured in this webinar was made possible through a contract between the American Public Health Association and Transportation for America funded through cooperative agreement 5U38OT000131-03 between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Public Health Association.  The contents of this document are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the American Public Health Association or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.