10 QUESTIONS
Building Healthier Cities BY TONY REHAGEN
Air quality expert and Tech professor Armistead Russell wants to make urban areas more sustainable and livable for the long term. TECH ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING PROFESSOR Armistead “Ted” Russell has traveled the world, including China, India and Minneapolis, studying air quality and its impacts on urban life. He is also part of a team of scientists, policymakers and industrialists working with the U.S. National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Sustainability Research Network (SRN) to build better cities. This year, the program’s second, Russell and his colleagues finally hit the pavement in Minneapolis to understand how things like climate change and parks affect city living. 1. WHAT IS THE GOAL OF THE NSF’S SUSTAINABILITY RESEARCH NETWORK PROJECT? Our focus is how infrastructure relates to or determines these various outcomes in cities. If we better understand variables such as transportation systems, pollution, the presence of greenspaces and pedestrian areas, and more, we can help cities address those issues and evolve into healthier, more livable places for human beings. 2. WHAT ARE SOME OF THE CHALLENGES YOU FACE? People are focused on reducing climate change by looking pretty far— 50 to 100 years—down the road. My hypothesis has been that we can affect faster change by identifying drivers that are more immediate to people. In developing countries, people have to worry about their individual health and welfare on a daily basis. As part of the SRN project, we looked at air pollution and health drivers to reduce the emissions of carbon dioxide. By doing this, we can identify strategies that will in the long run decrease global warming and, in the short run, also have tremendous benefits to improve citizens’ health. 3. SO YOU NEED TO FIND SHORT-TERM MOTIVATION FOR PEOPLE TO BUY IN TO CHANGE? Yes. For instance, on a previous
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project in India, we were looking at a couple of controls that could reduce the soiling of the Taj Mahal, the nation’s most visited architectural landmark. Meanwhile, this work also held long-term implications for reducing the emissions of radioactive gas so health conditions could be improved. Our study got quite a bit of press in India because it involved an iconic monument that most citizens held a personal stake in and because also we could make a quick, visible impact. 4. HOW DO YOU MOTIVATE PEOPLE TO SUPPORT SUSTAINABILITY EFFORTS IN THE UNITED STATES? We focus on E,H,W and L: Environmental sustainability, Health, Well-being and Liveability. We want to identify how people can be healthier and cities in which they will feel better. When people decide where they want to live and raise families, these factors are major drivers. We’re looking at how citizens are interacting with their city’s infrastructure, including the roads they drive on, the parks they frequent, the neighborhoods where they live, the services and amenities that are available to them, etc. We look at key things like water, transportation, waste management, energy and housing, too. 5. ARE THERE ALSO DIFFERENT OBSTACLES HERE IN THE U.S. THAN THERE ARE IN, SAY, CHINA? Over the next decade, China will be busy building the equivalent of the U.S. infrastructure. Their cities are growing that quickly. Meanwhile, the U.S. has a variety of types of urban areas, and each has its own opportunities and challenges. We have Atlanta, which has been rapidly evolving over the last three or four decades. And Atlanta has the ability to sprawl. Then there’s New York City that is still growing, but has to grow in a different way because of geographic limitations. Then there’s Detroit, which has been devastated by economic impacts to manufacturing and other industries, but has tons of free space for revitalization and growth. We’re working to identify how these cities can best evolve, and what changes people demand to make them more livable and healthy.