Collaborative Planning for Walkable, Healthy Neighborhoods

One of the most impactful projects I’ve worked on involved a mid-sized city where rising obesity rates, food insecurity, and traffic-related injuries prompted a coalition of public health officials, transportation engineers, and urban designers to take action. The city’s health department had collected detailed data on chronic disease hotspots and pedestrian injury clusters. By overlaying this data with urban form indicators such as sidewalk coverage, access to grocery stores, and transit proximity, we identified several priority neighborhoods for intervention. A joint task force was established, and together we designed a network of traffic-calmed streets, new pedestrian crossings, and wayfinding signage to improve walkability. Simultaneously, we provided incentives for corner stores to offer fresh produce and supported mobile markets to serve underserved areas.

This initiative would not have succeeded without the collaboration of housing providers, community-based organizations, and local residents. Public engagement was embedded from the start, with community walks, participatory mapping sessions, and health-focused design charrettes. Residents shared how unsafe intersections made them avoid walking, how long bus waits impacted diet choices, and how disinvestment had eroded trust. Their input not only shaped design but also built accountability. By centering residents’ lived experiences and aligning our efforts across departments, we delivered both physical infrastructure and social infrastructure—improvements that supported healthier lives and stronger neighborhood networks.

Data Integration and Shared Metrics

Effective cross-sector collaboration hinges on the ability to share and interpret data across departmental lines. In many cities, transportation, planning, and public health teams operate with different data systems and protocols, making collaboration difficult. One strategy to overcome this is the establishment of standardized data-sharing agreements that outline what datasets can be shared, how they are anonymized, and how they will be used. For example, integrating pedestrian injury reports from emergency rooms with transportation collision data can reveal patterns that neither dataset shows on its own. Cities like Los Angeles have used this approach to prioritize Vision Zero safety investments in historically underserved neighborhoods with high rates of pedestrian fatalities and chronic disease¹.

Joint goal setting is another critical strategy. Rather than each department advancing its own objectives in isolation, shared performance indicators—such as increased rates of active transportation, reduced air pollution, or improved food access—create alignment. This requires early and ongoing dialogue about what success looks like and how it will be measured. In our projects, we have used tools like Health Impact Assessments (HIAs) to evaluate proposed infrastructure projects, combining environmental, health, and equity metrics. The use of a common data framework allowed planners, engineers, and health professionals to see how their work intersected and where it could be mutually reinforcing².

Community Engagement as Infrastructure

Public engagement is often treated as a pro