A couple of weeks ago, we reached out to our ardently loyal followers asking them to vote for our Ford CityOne proposal to the City of Austin to use Healthy Placemaking as a “vehicle” to deliver true, equitable mobility - and access to health - to vulnerable communities. We called this approach: mobile healthy places. We pitched our hearts out to the City of Jan. 16th. And on Jan 21st, at the finale event, we unfortunately did not win. However, we still fervently believe not only was this a WINNING proposal, but that it is a unique, effective, and necessary way forward to ensure equitable mobility and access for all - while delivering places people love. So we wanted to share our full proposal to create mobile healthy places with you all and start a discussion around how the principles that guide great placemaking and tactical urbanism can (and should) be applied as a way to address the inequitable access to mobility, health, quality of life, and great places…

Below is a high-level summary of our Ford proposal to deliver mobile healthy places, a copy of our pitch deck, as well as a link to download the detailed proposal. We’d love to hear your thoughts around equitable, healthy placemaking!

The East Austin community deserves to be safe, happy, and healthy.

Instead, they struggle to overcome…Overcome a lack of resources. Overcome a hostile built environment. Overcome a lack of mobility.

We'll pair built environment and community-led data with engagement to deliver a mobile healthy place, by: Creating a prioritized list of locations for mobile healthy places, activating one such location, and providing high-level recommendations for

This data-driven, community-led approach gives East Austin residents affordable, safe, and enjoyable access to healthy living, which serves to connect them, in a near-term, optimized, and feasible way, that engenders: Wellness, Happiness, Dignity, H

We have a 3 part plan to build community trust: 1) We’ll work with existing community-based organizations, who have built up trust, to get feedback on the pilot, get help galvanizing the community, and work with them to coordinate the community wor

As to the design features that directly impact equity. Many urban design features disproportionately impact vulnerable populations, including the presence, and condition, of sidewalks, and curbcuts,; sidewalk barriers; midblock crossings; street le

As far as analog methods for data collection go, we'll collect community-led data during the community engagement workshops, which will be digitally-enabled. That said, We'll have a paper-and-pencil version of the data collection tool, accessible by

Our existing State of Place software solution is desirable, feasible and scalable. It’s been used by dozens of citymakers. We’ve significantly automated our data collection and this pilot will deliver not just a use case of a mobile healthy place, b

Ford CityOne Austin Challenge Question

“How might we make it easier for East Austin community members to live a healthier life through improved mobility and transportation?

The East Austin Story…Is. So. Many. Vulnerable Communities.

The East Austin area has a long history of spatial injustice that has led to entrenched, structural inequities, manifested most vividly by the disproportionately and significantly lowered life expectancy of its residents. Decades of disinvestment and the overall area’s auto-oriented, sprawling development pattern have led to myriad mobility challenges, including inadequate pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure and lack of reliable or effective public transportation options, as well as a dearth of health-related destinations accessible in the area. Accordingly, the East Austin area faces a two-fold problem: 1) a lack of proximal healthy living resources and 2) a lack of mobility, defined as the inability to safely, affordably, conveniently, and pleasurably get to healthy resources.

Tactical Placemaking + Mobile Health Fairs + Food Trucks = Mobile Healthy Places

Recently, "tactical urbanism" projects, in which under-utilized or disinvested places have been temporarily transformed into places that promote public life, prosperity, and increase road safety using "lighter, quicker, cheaper" methods, including paint, affordable materials (such as wooden pallets), and people-led efforts, have proliferated across US communities. Sometimes, tactical urbanism projects have focused on "activations" of spaces, by organizing community-led events, including farmers' markets, for example. We see an opportunity to use such methods to activate existing community assets or underutilized spaces into public places that make vital health resources accessible to vulnerable populations. We refer to these activations as "mobile, healthy places." We believe these places can and should be identified and defined by the communities that need them most, but can include access to health services, public space, healthy food, social events, etc.

Mobile Healthy Places for Vulnerable Communities

The East Austin’s “current state” involves a rapidly evolving landscape, experiencing a range of spatial justice challenges, which are a byproduct of its land use and structurally racist history - a history which rings true in many vulnerable communities today. As such, East Austin residents lack access to healthy living due to compromised mobility and lack of proximal healthy resources. To address this lack of access to healthcare, healthy foods, pharmaceuticals, recreational facilities, etc., as well as other social determinants of health disparities, we propose a two-sided, data-driven approach that uses built environment and community-led data to site – and ultimately activate – a “mobile healthy place,” which literally brings community-determined health resources to residents, in an optimized location within the East Austin area. While others have sought to provide access to health resources to the community via mobile vehicles, these efforts have not proven to be effective, scalable, or desirable. Previous efforts have been inadequate because they have been top-down efforts, devoid of data - either in terms of built environment, “micro-scale” conditions OR regarding community desires and needs. Accordingly, the siting of mobile services and allocation of resources have not been optimized, nor have these efforts integrated a framework for a longer-term implementation, tied to future built environment improvements that would serve to further optimize the use of mobile services.

State of Place will utilize a data-driven, community-led approach to engender a future state in East Austin in which health services are made accessible to all. Specifically, our pilot will enable equitable access to healthy living via healthy mobile places, sited in optimal locations. A combination of micro-scale, built environment data and data around community needs, satisfaction, and preferences will determine the location and provision of services rendered, given existing concentrations of vulnerable populations, under-utilized public spaces, and built environment quality. The pilot will culminate in a single-use case activation of a public space in which a variety of health services could be accessible by a large concentration of vulnerable East Austin residents, and will serve as a demonstration case for mobile healthy places that can be scaled and replicated as a desirable, feasible, and viable measure by which to address the challenge at hand: to enable healthy living via improved mobility and transportation.

Creating Equitable, Healthy Places People Love through Built Environment & Community-Led Data:

A 5-Step Approach

Given the lack of proximity and access to health resources in East Austin, we propose to utilize the State of Place predictive analytics software platform to use built environment and community-led data to:

Create an objective baseline of the built environment quality of East Austin (based on data collected using “visual machine learning,” via Google Street View, based on nearly 300 urban design features, such as sidewalks, crosswalks, curbcuts, benches, etc.)
Assess community desires and needs with respect to both health services and the built environment, using a data-driven approach (already developed by State of Place) via community engagement efforts (specifically two community engagement workshops)
Set data-driven (geographical), community-led priority areas within East Austin best suited to host mobile healthy places, optimizing a) access by highest concentration of vulnerable population, b) built environment conditions, and c) mobility
Activate one single-use case of a mobile healthy place (during a one-day demonstration pilot) that brings together healthy-living resources and services as prioritized by the community via community engagement efforts, by partnering with local health provider(s)
Deliver recommendations for how to scale and replicate the mobile healthy places solution, including high-level built environment recommendations and shortlist of feasible sites for future mobile healthy places
Benefits of Mobile Healthy Places

The mobile healthy places approach will ensure that:

Health services provided are those most desired and needed by residents
The siting of mobile healthy facilities are optimal in terms of their reach to the highest concentration of “vulnerable” populations
The built environment of these sites afford the most affordable, safe, comfortable, and enjoyable access to healthy living (within the mobile healthy places) possible.

We believe that mobile healthy places are the best immediate-term solution to enable access to healthy living to vulnerable populations in East Austin, given existing challenges and constraints. Additionally, State of Place’s data-driven approach serves as a framework upon which to scale-up the results of the pilot, not only with respect to the deployment of continual mobile healthy places, but also as a way to more permanently address the built environment challenges of East Austin. In other words, not only are we providing a desirable, feasible and viable pilot solution, but also a clear roadmap for deployable “next-steps” that can help address the more underlying, entrenched mobility challenges of East Austin. (Specifically, our software can generate prioritized recommendations for specific built environment changes that will maximize the accessibility to mobile healthy places in the future).

For the whole proposal, including a detailed implementation plan, please download the proposal by clicking the link below and/or schedule a demo to find out how State of Place works! :)

Why Health & Equity Must Be at the Heart of Place(making)