New York City
New York City has been a global leader in healthy urban design and in improving the built environment—the human-made environment consisting of our neighborhoods, streets, buildings, and their amenities—to assist in the prevention and control of the current epidemics of noncommunicable disease and their risk factors. This chapter shows how, through the translation of research-based health evidence into the development and implementation of user-friendly resources with and for non–health professionals involved in the planning, design, construction, maintenance, and renovation of the built environment, such as the Active Design Guidelines and its supplements, NYC pioneered formal efforts toward systematic evidence-based environmental design that can decrease physical inactivity and sedentariness, key risk factors for mortality and morbidity around the world today, while addressing other key public health issues like safety and equity.