About the Authors

Arlie Adkins is Assistant Professor of urban planning in the School of Landscape Architecture and Planning at the University of Arizona. His research focuses on understanding relationships between planning, neighbourhood environments, active transportation, health and social equity. He has a PhD from Portland State University and a master’s degree in city planning from UC Berkeley. His research has been funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Department of Transportation, and the National Institute for Transportation and Communities. Prior to his academic career, Arlie worked in the planning department at TriMet, the transit agency in Portland, Oregon, and at Flexcar, a pioneer of car sharing in North America.

Erin D. Bouldin is Assistant Professor in the Department of Health and Exercise Science at Appalachian State University. She uses her training in public health and epidemiology to measure health and function, including physical activity and sedentary time, among people with disabilities and chronic health conditions. Dr. Bouldin’s research is motivated by an interest in identifying factors at multiple levels of the social-ecological framework that influence health and function and intervening to reduce impairments and improve population health and participation.

Hayley E. Christian (née Cutt) is a Research Fellow at the School of Population and Global Health, The University of Western Australia (UWA). She is a Research Associate at the UWA Centre for the Built Environment and Health and Telethon Kids Institute and an Associate on the Australian National Health & Medical Research Council (NHMRC) – Centre for Research Excellence in Healthy, Liveable and Equitable Communities. She holds an Australian National Heart Foundation Future Leader Fellowship and leads a programme of research focussed on the development, evaluation and translation of strategies for improving physical activity levels, health and well-being through multi-level interventions focused on the individual, social and built environment. A focus of this work is on improving physical activity levels through identifying and testing intervention strategies to increase physical activity levels through walking with the family dog. Previously she held an NHMRC/National Heart Foundation Early Career Fellowship and was a Research Fellow on an NHMRC Capacity Building Grant involving a natural experiment of the impact of a new urban planning code on physical activity and health (RESIDE Project). Dr. Christian has a PhD (with distinction) from UWA and has attracted over $3 million in research funding. She is an Editorial Board member of the American Journal of Health Promotion.

Diana P. Díaz is Research Assistant at the Group of Epidemiology at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. She has an MD degree from the Universidad de los Andes. She works as a coinvestigator in the study of the Ciclovias-Recreativas to promote active living.

Ding Ding is Senior Research Fellow at Sydney School of Public Health, the University of Sydney, Australia. Dr. Ding earned her Master of Public Health degree from San Diego State University, and PhD from the Joint Doctoral Program in Public Health from the University of California San Diego and San Diego State University, USA. As an epidemiologist and population behavioural scientist, she works at the intersection of environments, lifestyles and chronic disease prevention. She has published extensively in the areas of environmental and behavioural epidemiology, with a special focus on physical activity and health. In 2016, she led a team of prominent scientists in launching a successful Lancet series on physical activity. Her research, often published in high impact scholarly journals, has been widely disseminated through media around the world.

Yochai Eisenberg is Research Specialist at the Institute on Disability and Human Development and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His research focuses on evaluation of community accessibility, the built environment, transportation, Geographic Information Systems, and health promotion for people with disabilities. Specifically, he is interested in the role of the built environment (including transportation) as a moderator of the relationship between disability and physical activity. He utilises GPS and GIS software to analyse community participation and travel patterns among people with mobility disabilities. Of late, he has worked on community-based approaches to implementing accessible environments through the Community Health Inclusion Index (CHII). Mr. Eisenberg is completing his PhD (part-time) in Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) focusing on evaluation of policies, systems and environmental changes and their impacts on people with disabilities.

Kelly R. Evenson is a Research Professor at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, Gillings School of Global Public Health. She is trained in both epidemiology and exercise science. Dr. Evenson has collaborated or led many studies on physical activity and sedentary behaviour and coauthored or authored more than 300 peer-reviewed articles. She is a fellow with the American College of Sports Medicine and served for three years as an Associate Editor and now serves on the Editorial Board for their journal, Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. She also serves on the Editorial Boards for the Journal of Physical Activity and Health and the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity.

Reid Ewing is Chair of the Department of City and Metropolitan Planning at the University of Utah, associate editor of the Journal of the American Planning Association, and columnist for Planning magazine. He holds master’s degrees in Engineering and City Planning from Harvard University, and a PhD in Urban Planning and Transportation Systems from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Ewing’s work is aimed at planning practitioners. His eight books include Pedestrian and Transit Oriented Design, just co-published by the Urban Land Institute and American Planning Association; and Best Development Practices, listed by the American Planning Association (APA) as one of the 100 essential books in planning over the past 100 years. His 90 peer reviewed articles include ‘Relationship between urban sprawl and physical activity, obesity, and morbidity’, the most widely cited academic paper in the Social Sciences as of late 2005, according to Essential Science Indicators; and ‘Travel and the built environment: a meta-analysis’, given the Best Article of 2010 Award by the American Planning Association.

Mailin Gaupp-Berghausen is Scientific Associate at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna, Institute for Transport Studies. She has a Master degree in Environment and Bio Resources Management from BOKU Vienna (2014). Her research focuses on travel behaviour, active mobility research and mobility management. Currently she is working in the administration and management team of two European projects on promoting active mobility (SWITCH – Encouraging a SWITCH from car-based to active mobility using personalised information and communication technology approaches, PASTA – Physical Activity through Sustainable Transport Approaches).

Klaus Gebel was Senior Research Fellow in the College of Public Health, Medical and Veterinary Sciences at James Cook University in Cairns, Australia, for the duration of editing this book. He now is a Senior Lecturer in Public Health at the School of Allied Health at Australian Catholic University in North Sydney. He has master degrees in exercise science from the German Sport University Cologne and Victoria University, Melbourne, where he specialised first on exercise for rehabilitation and then on physical activity and public health. He did his PhD at the School of Public Health of the University of Sydney under the supervision of Professors Adrian Bauman and Neville Owen. His main research areas are the relationship between built environments and physical activity and health effects of physical activity. Klaus has studied and worked at seven universities in three countries and has received multiple grants, scholarships, and awards. Through the media his 2015 paper on physical activity and mortality in JAMA Internal Medicine reached more than 1.1 billion people and he was also invited to present the findings from this study in a TEDx talk.

Nancy Gell is Assistant Professor in Rehabilitation and Movement Science at the University of Vermont. Dr. Gell’s research interests include technological and built environment influences on active transport, particularly for people ageing with chronic disease and with mobility disability. Her current research examines how the built environment supports continued participation in physical activity among cancer survivors. Since her appointment at the University of Vermont she has instituted service-learning projects to help health profession students learn about environment influence on physical activity and active transport, while working with community partners to improve access to active transport opportunities in the local community.

Silvia A. González is Research Associate of the Group of Epidemiology at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. She holds a degree in nutrition from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, and an MPH from the School of Government and the School of Medicine at the Universidad de los Andes. Her research interests include physical activity, nutrition and built environments among the populations of children and adults in Latin America. She is currently a co-investigator of the following projects: Longitudinal evaluation of the spread of behaviours related with overweight and obesity in school aged children: A social network analysis, The evaluation of the effectiveness of Muévete Escolar, and the evaluation of Ciclovías Recreativas programmes. Currently she is a co-investigator of the Physical Activity and Sedentary Behaviours component of the National Nutrition Survey for Colombia. As the representative of Latin America for the executive committee of the Active Healthy Kids Global Alliance, she has coordinated the development of the Report Card of Physical Activity among children and youth in Colombia, and she has served as a mentor for other countries in the region.

Chinh Ho is Senior Research Fellow in the Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies (ITLS) at the University of Sydney. He has a growing publication record and is a multiple prize winner. Chinh provides strategic and operational advice on urban and regional planning, including economic analysis of transport infrastructure projects, urban mobility for developing world environments and public transport issues in New South Wales, Australia. His research interests cover group decision-making, activity-based modelling, public transport planning, discrete choice modelling and data visualisation.

Sandy James is a City Planner and a member of the Canadian Institute of Planning as well as a LEED approved professional. She has implemented innovative community public space projects and connected Green Street Greenways for the City of Vancouver and other North American municipalities. Sandy commenced her city planning career working with Canadian public health guru and Chief Vancouver Medical Health Officer Dr. John Blatherwick in the intersection between public health and city planning. Sandy is a Director of the Walk Vancouver Society which strives for safe, comfortable and convenient walking environments throughout the Metropolitan Vancouver region. Sandy co-edits and is an author on Price Tags Vancouver, the online blog on Metro Vancouver urban issues, and was the Conference Chair of the Walk 21 Vancouver conference, bringing the region together for an international discussion on walking policy. Sandy speaks and consults internationally and has served on several international conference committees. She is also a Director of Let Them Be Kids, which builds social capital, public space and playgrounds across North America. She is the Minister of Health’s appointment to the Board of the College of Psychologists of British Columbia and has given a TEDx talk on the Transformative Power of Walking.

Petra Jens has been the Representative for Pedestrian Matters of the City of Vienna since 2013, increasing visibility of pedestrians’ needs and rights and raising awareness of the benefits of walking. After studies of Agriculture at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna, she designed and headed a parents’ initiative against dog droppings, claiming fairness for conduct in public space in 2006. With 157,000 signatures this was one of Austria’s most successful initiatives which led to sustainable changes of littering behaviour in Vienna. From 2007 until 2013 she worked for the welfare organisation Diakonie Austria.

Paul Kelly is Lecturer in Physical Activity for Health at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and is a member of the Physical Activity for Health Research Centre (PAHRC) there. Previously he worked at University of Oxford where he gained his PhD. Walking is one of Paul’s primary research areas. He has published on how to measure walking better, the health benefits of walking and the evaluation of interventions aimed at increasing walking levels. Measurement of walking is a particular area of interest, and understanding the properties of different methods and how this impacts the evidence remains a priority. Walking is also Paul’s favourite leisure time activity. He likes to walk the Highlands, Islands, Waterways and Canals of Scotland with his wife, friends and his dog Munro.

Jacky Kennedy has worked in the non-profit sector since 1993 to promote and encourage people to walk and she has worked extensively with municipalities to encourage them to create great walking environments. Jacky initiated Canada’s first Active & Safe Routes to School programme in 1996 with Green Communities Canada. By 2012 the programme had grown to every province and territory with the development and dissemination of a Canadian School Travel Planning model. In 2007 Jacky collaborated with the City of Toronto and Walk21 to co-host the Toronto 2007 Walk21 conference – the first time in Canada. In 2008, Green Communities, led by Jacky, created Canada Walks to bring all of their innovative walking initiatives under one umbrella. In 2013, Canada Walks launched a community Walk Friendly designation programme across Ontario.

Jennifer L. Kent is Research Fellow in the Urban and Regional Planning program at the University of Sydney. Her research interests lay primarily in the intersections between urban and transport planning and health, including planning for active transport and attachments to the private car as a form of mobility. Her most recent work has its focus on the implications, both positive and negative, of shifts away from private car use. Jennifer publishes regularly in high ranking scholarly journals and her work has been used to inform policy development in Australia.

Abby C. King is Professor of Health Research & Policy and Medicine at Stanford School of Medicine. Recipient of the Outstanding Scientific Contributions in Health Psychology Award from the American Psychological Association, her research focuses on the development, evaluation and translation of public health interventions to reduce chronic disease and its key risk factors, including physical inactivity and sedentary behaviour. She has served on a number of government taskforces in the United States and abroad, including membership on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Scientific Advisory Committee on National Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Objectives for 2020, and the Science Board of the U.S. President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition. She currently chairs, with Kenneth Powell, the USDHHS 2018 Physical Activity Guidelines Scientific Advisory Committee. An elected member of the Academy of Behavioural Medicine Research and Past President of the Society of Behavioural Medicine, Dr. King was one of 10 U.S. scientists honoured by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) in 2014 for outstanding research targeting health inequities. Her research on citizen science engagement to promote healthful living environments for all has been honoured with an international excellence award.

Robert Korycinski is Scientific Program Analyst at the National Cancer Institute. His current work involves evaluating physical activity and epidemiology research programmes, analysing physical activity and methodology grant portfolios, investigating the contextual determinants of dietary behaviour and synthesising research on cancer-related quality-of-life outcomes. Previously, Mr. Korycinski has worked on projects related to geospatial, contextual and multilevel approaches to cancer research, as well as diet and physical activity measurement. Other research interests include public health policy, health disparities and the impact of nutrition and physical activity on obesity. Mr. Korycinski holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Tufts University in International Relations and Spanish, concentrated in Global Health, Nutrition, and the Environment.

Sonia Lavadinho is the CEO and founder of Bfluid Research. She is also an associated research fellow at the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne and an invited lecturer at the ENPC and the Palladio Institute in Paris and the ENTPE in Lyon. Specialising in urban anthropology, sociology and proxemics, she has been doing extensive research for the past 15 years in the fields of sustainable mobility, namely on active modes, the use of public transport and multimodal strategies. She likes to draw inspiration from the fields of placemaking and tactical urbanism to conceive life-size experiments in order to test which factors make post-car cities more attractive. Her main research aims are threefold: identifying emerging trends in mobility and hypermobility, describing nearness dynamics in relation to the intensity and biodiversity of the uses of public space and gaining a better understanding of the complex interrelations between active lifestyles, urban design and the health and wealth of creative cities. Sonia works closely with public authorities, real estate developers and transport operators to share her scientific expertise and counsel in the fields of sustainable mobility and urban vitality, and is regularly invited as keynote speaker to international conferences in her fields of expertise.

Pablo D. Lemoine is the innovation director for the Centro Nacional de Consultoría, a private company with a long expertise in assessing public policy. His PhD dissertation was based on the health impacts of public transport, specifically, the relation between transport infrastructure and walking for transport in Bogota. His research is motivated by the increasing burden of non-communicable diseases and through statistical and agent-based models provides evidence of the benefits public transportation may bring by increasing physical activity and improving public health.

Todd Litman is the founder and executive director of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute, an independent research organisation dedicated to developing innovative solutions to transport problems. His work helps expand the range of impacts and options considered in transportation decision-making, improve evaluation methods and make specialised technical concepts accessible to a larger audience. His research is used worldwide in transport planning and policy analysis. Todd has worked on numerous studies that evaluate transportation costs, benefits and innovations. He has worked as a research and planning consultant for a diverse range of clients, including government agencies, professional organisations, developers and nongovernment organisations in more than two dozen countries, on every continent except Antarctica.

Clover Maitland is a Research Associate with the Health Promotion Evaluation Unit within the School of Sport Science, Exercise and Health at The University of Western Australia (UWA). Prior to commencing at UWA, Clover held a senior management position with the Heart Foundation in Western Australia, managing social marketing campaigns and health promotion programs to address physical inactivity and unhealthy weight, and was also a member of the organisation’s national research and evaluation committee. A passion for children’s physical activity and keen interest in the role of research and evaluation to inform policy and practice, led her to commence a PhD at UWA investigating home environmental influences on children’s activity. Since joining UWA, Clover has enjoyed working across a number of research and teaching roles in her interest areas of physical activity, health promotion and public health. Along with schnoodles Ollie and Gracie, she is a regular user of local footpaths and parks.

George Mammen completed his PhD in 2015 from the University of Toronto in the Department of Exercise Science. His research focused on interventions and strategies to help increase active school travel in children. Specifically, his dissertation evaluated the impact of a Canadian-wide delivered intervention – school travel planning – on rates of active travel and related attitudes in students, parents, teachers, principals, practitioners and policy makers. He has given invited presentations on this research and broader active school travel topics to various municipal government departments and elementary schools across the Greater Toronto Area.

Gavin R. McCormack is a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) New Investigator. He is Associate Professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences, Cumming School of Medicine and an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Faculty of Environmental Design, at the University of Calgary (Alberta, Canada). Since 2014, he has been an Associate Scientific Editor for Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Prevention in Canada. Gavin received his BSc in Human Movement from the University of Western Australia, his MSc in Sports Science (Exercise Physiology specialisation) from Edith Cowan University (Western Australia) and his PhD in Public Health from the University of Western Australia. He also undertook postdoctoral training at the University of Calgary. Gavin’s research programme is in the area of population and public health, in particular investigating the relationships between the neighbourhood built and social environments and health including physical activity, diet, sedentary behaviour and weight status among adults and children.

Peter McCue has been the Executive Officer of the NSW Premier’s Council for Active Living (PCAL) for the last decade. He has been active in research describing interagency policy change processes and in particular efforts to incorporate public health matters within the transport and planning sectors. While at PCAL, Peter has led initiatives that have achieved a number of policy and legislative successes such as the inclusion of an explicit health objective within the draft NSW Planning Bill, the monetisation of the health benefits of active travel within national and state cost benefit frameworks and the establishment of the first ever NSW walking and cycling targets and subsequent state active travel strategies.

Dafna Merom is a public health expert specialised in physical activity epidemiology and promotion. She currently holds a full time position as A/Professor in the School of Science and Health in Western Sydney University where she lectures core units in the Master of Public Health/Master in Health Science programmes. Her current research focus is on physical activity in older adults, in particular exploring the benefits of particular types of physical activity/sports in the prevention of age related neuro-motor and cognitive declines. She has conducted epidemiological research and several clinical trials comparing the incidence of falls, heart health and executive functions of older adults participating in walking as opposed to more complex physical activities that require skills acquisition such as dance, swimming or cycling. Dafna Merom devoted her PhD research to the public health significance of walking, particularly as a mode of travel. She is recognised for her expertise in active travel research, including its measurement, surveillance and promotion.

Sergio Montero is Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Development at the Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. His research interests focus on understanding the local and global governance dynamics behind the circulation, learning and adoption of urban planning policies as well as in the dynamics of local and regional economic development, with an emphasis on cities and regions in Latin America. Sergio is currently working on two research projects. The first is on the global circulation of sustainable urban transport policies and ‘best practices’. More specifically, he is interested in the local and transnational actors, networks and agendas that have facilitated the construction of two urban policies from Bogotá, Colombia – Ciclovía and TransMilenio BRT – as international ‘best practices’ in sustainable urban transport and the different ways in which they have been learned and adopted in other cities. The second research project, in collaboration with researchers at UC Berkeley and Deusto-Orkestra, examines the relationship between governance networks and local economic development in small and intermediate cities in Latin America. He has a Master and PhD in City and Regional Planning from the University of California, Berkeley.

Corinne Mulley is the founding Chair in Public Transport at the Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies at the University of Sydney. Since her appointment to Newcastle University as a transport economist she has been active in transport research at the interface of transport policy and economics. More recently Corinne has concentrated on specific issues relating to public transport. She led a high profile European and UK consortia undertaking benchmarking in urban public transport and has provided both practical and strategic advice to local and national governments on benchmarking, rural transport issues and public transport management. Professor Mulley’s research is motivated by a need to provide evidence for policy initiatives and she has been involved in such research at local, regional, national and European levels before moving to Australia. Since her appointment to Sydney University, Corinne has been active in public transport policy addressing issues of importance to NSW and the Federal governments as well as contributing to more local issues, including travel planning, the health impacts of public transport, community transport and flexible transport services.

Marie Murphy is Professor of Exercise and Health leading the Centre for Physical Activity and Health Research at Ulster University. She graduated from Ulster with a BA (Hons) Sport & Leisure and PGCE in Physical Education and was awarded an MSc in Sports Science and a PhD in Exercise Physiology from Loughborough University. Marie’s research focuses on the effect of physical activity and exercise, in particular walking, on health and uses a multidisciplinary approach that has included outcome measures ranging from the behavioural to the biochemical. Her work has contributed to the evidence base underlying the current physical activity guidelines in the United States, United Kingdom and Ireland and she was a co-author of the UK guidelines by the four Chief Medical Officers in the report ‘Start Active Stay Active’ (DoH, 2011). She is a member of the Chief Medical Officer’s expert advisory group on physical activity. Marie is a fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) and the British Association of Sport & Exercise Sciences (BASES) and is on the Board of the International Society of Physical Activity and Health (ISPAH) and the WHO Europe Health Enhancing Physical Activity Steering Committee (HEPA Europe). She was a member of sub-panel 26 Sport and Exercise Sciences, Leisure and Tourism for the Research Excellence Framework 2014.

Nanette Mutrie is Chair of Physical Activity for Health at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and she directs the Physical Activity for Health Research Centre there. She is also a Visiting Professor at the University of Ulster and at MRC Social and Public Health Sciences Unit at the University of Glasgow. Nanette is a Chartered Psychologist with the British Psychological Society and has extensive experience of conducting interventions aimed at increasing physical activity. She is also an Honorary Fellow of BASES. She has contributed to policy, for example, ‘let’s make Scotland more active’ and the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) programmes on physical activity and the environment and the promotion of walking and cycling (www.nice.org.uk). Nanette was awarded an MBE in the UK New Year’s Honours list 2015 for services to physical activity for health. She gets her own exercise by commuter cycling, dog walking and playing pickle ball (fast growing new sport).

Sunghoon Oh is the Director of the Creative Urban Research Group and a tenured Research Fellow in Architecture and Urban Research Institute in Korea. His main fields of interest are pedestrian behaviour, walking environments, future city as well as urban design theory. His research specifically explores how the pedestrian behaves in daily life in urban streets and how the walking environment could be improved efficiently in existing urban texture, which underpins the sustainable rationale for urban design process. Dr. Oh’s work on the walking environments in Korea has appeared in several Korean academic publications. In addition, since 2013, he has been in charge of over 40 sites of the ‘Pedestrian Priority Street Project’ for the Seoul Metropolitan Government as well as consulting diverse local governments on walking environment policy and design issues.

Diana C. Parra is Assistant Professor in the Program of Physical Therapy, Washington University School of Medicine. She is also a scholar in the Institute of Public Health and visiting professor at Universidad del Rosario in Bogota, Colombia. Prior to her work and studies (Masters in Public Health from Saint Louis University and PhD in Social Work, Washington University in St. Louis) in the United States, Dr. Parra earned her graduate degree in Physical Therapy from Rosario University in Bogotá, Colombia. Dr. Parra completed a postdoctoral experience at Sao Paulo University in the School of Public Health, Department of Nutrition. Dr. Parra has an extensive publication record and experience conducting research in Colombia and Brazil, particularly around the topic of physical activity promotion, obesity and lately in food-based diets from her experience in Brazil and collaboration with Dr. Carlos Monteiro and his team at NUPENS, responsible for developing the new dietary guidelines of Brazil. Most of her work in Colombia has been related to the association of urban environments and community-based programs in the promotion of active living. Her research is motivated by the existing social inequalities in the distribution of transportation and recreation opportunities among disadvantaged populations in Colombia and Brazil. Her projects have provided research and practice-based evidence for policy and programmatic initiatives in Brazil and Colombia.

Carlos Pedraza is Research Assistant at the Group of Epidemiology at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, and at the Department of Radiology at the Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá. He has a MD degree and a B.Sc. degree in electronic engineering from the Universidad de los Andes. He works as a coinvestigator in the study of the Ciclovias-Recreativas to promote active living and in the study of communication technologies for the prevention and diagnosis of diseases and computer-assisted diagnosis in diagnostic imaging.

William Riggs is Professor of City and Regional Planning at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo and researcher with the Cal Poly Center for Obesity Research. His research focuses on active travel, parking & transportation, housing, economics, and emerging technology. His recent work focuses on the behavioural economics behind travel via walking, biking and transit including methods to rationalise irrational choice sets. In addition to his academic capacity Dr. Riggs also has over 15 years experience as a practicing urban planner including work as the Director of Research at Sustinere Consulting and service on the City of San Luis Obispo, Planning Commission. He has been both a National Science Foundation Fellow and a UC Transportation Center Fellow. He is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) and LEED certified by the US Green Building Council.

Dori Rosenberg, PhD, MPH, is Assistant Scientific Investigator at the Group Health Research Institute and is Affiliate Assistant Professor with the University of Washington, Department of Health Services. She focuses on physical activity promotion among older adults and people with chronic conditions in order to prevent, control, and improve physical and mental health. As part of this, she focuses on better understanding of built environment barriers to lifestyle activity and mobility among older adults and those with mobility impairments. She completed her PhD in clinical psychology & behavioural medicine at the University of California San Diego and San Diego State University. After completing her postdoctoral fellowship in Rehabilitation Medicine at the University of Washington, she joined the faculty of the Group Health Research Institute and the University of Washington School of Public Health. Her work is supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (K23HL119352) and the National Institute on Aging (R21AG043853) at the National Institutes of Health.

Liza S. Rovniak, PhD, MPH, is Associate Professor of Medicine and Public Health Sciences at Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine. Dr. Rovniak’s research investigates how to engineer physical and social environments to sustain physical activity and other health behaviours. Using an ecological framework, Dr. Rovniak conducts intervention and epidemiological research across diverse populations and settings (e.g., workplaces, physicians’ offices, neighbourhoods) to learn how to establish environments and policies that facilitate long-term behaviour change. She has been Principal Investigator of six grants funded by the National Institutes of Health and state-level funding that have investigated how to build sustainable environments to improve population health.

Olga L. Sarmiento is the founding Chair of the Group of Epidemiology at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. Since her appointment at the Universidad de los Andes she has been active in research related to built environments and health in populations of Latin America. Dr. Sarmiento has been active in international networks aimed at conducting research to promote healthy living including the International Physical Activity, and Environment Network (IPEN), The International Study of Childhood Obesity, Lifestyle and the Environment (ISCOLE) and the Network of Ciclovias Recreativas of the Americas. She was the lead investigator of the studies to assess the benefits of the community programmes of Ciclovias and physical activity classes in public spaces in Colombia. She is the lead investigator of the component of physical activity from the Colombian National Nutrition Survey (ENSIN). For this research she received Honorary Distinctions from the Ministry of Sports in Colombia for her academic work promoting healthy behaviours in Colombia and from the Institute of Sports and Recreation from Bogota for her work on the evaluation of the Recreovia and Ciclovia programmes.

Ruth L. Steiner is Professor and Director of the Center for Health and the Built Environment in the School of Landscape Architecture and Planning and an affiliate faculty in the School of Natural Resources and Environment (SNRE) and the Transportation Institute (UFTI) at the University of Florida. Her research focuses on the coordination of transportation and land use, with a particular focus on planning for all modes of transportation and its impact on communities, the environment, and public health. Her recent research has focuses on the impact of school siting, school transportation and land development patterns on children’s travel, the health and community impacts of redevelopment of old industrial sites in cities, parking supply and demand management in central cities, the integration of roundabouts into access management systems, the incorporation of multimodal performance measures into land development planning and regional cooperation in transportation planning. She has been active in transportation planning and policy issues of importance in the State of Florida and throughout the United States.

Philip Stoker is Assistant Professor of Planning and Landscape Architecture in the College of Architecture, Planning, and Landscape Architecture at the University of Arizona. Philip holds a PhD in Metropolitan Planning, Policy, and Design from the University of Utah where he completed his thesis on urban water use and sustainability. His academic foundations are in ecology, planning, and natural resource management. He has conducted environmental and social science research internationally, including work with the World Health Organization, Parks Canada, the National Park Service and the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games.

Miles Tight is Professor of Transport, Energy and Environment at the School of Engineering, University of Birmingham. He has been actively researching sustainable transport for more than 30 years and most recently has been very interested in the role of walking and cycling in urban transport and how long-term change in transport occurs. He has led a number of high-profile research projects in these areas, most recently the EPSRC funded projects STEPCHANGE (Sustainable Transport Evidence and modelling Paradigms: Cohort Household Analysis to support New Goals in Engineering design) (EP/100212X/1 and EP/I00212X/2) and ‘Visions of the role of walking and cycling in 2030’ (EP/000468/1). He has received international funding through the ‘IMPACT’ project (Implementation Paths for Action towards Sustainable Mobility) funded through the Swedish MISTRA programme, and the EU funded ‘TRANSLINK’ project (Transportation Research Links for Sustainable Development) and ‘MIME’ (Market-based Impact Mitigation for the Environment) projects. He has just become a member of the SMArt CitIES Network for Sustainable Urban Futures (SMARTIES Net) funded by ESRC which is looking specifically at future urban development in Indian cities.

Camilo A. Triana is Research Assistant at the Group of Epidemiology at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. He has an MD degree from the Universidad de los Andes. He works as a coinvestigator in the study of the Ciclovias-Recreativas to promote active living and the network of health examination survey researchers from the Americas and the United Kingdom.

Wiebke Unbehaun has been Senior Scientist at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna, Institute for Transport Studies since 2006. She holds a Master degree in Spatial Planning from the Technical University of Dortmund (2002). She has been project coordinator and manager of various national and international research projects. Her research focuses on travel behaviour, gender issues in transportation, attitudes research and mobility management. In the later field she has strong experiences with applying ICT for changing travel behaviour. She is an expert in developing and implementing mobility management measures like personal travel planning and in planning for walking and cycling in urban and rural areas. She has authored publications in the field of travel behaviour, promoting active travel with ICT-based personalised approaches, and gender and diversity differences in mobility needs and travel behaviour.