Our Approach
Transportation policies, guidance, standards, and decision-making processes rarely account for the climate change, public health, and equity impacts of transportation. Many transportation practices prioritize mobility without recognizing the full impacts of that priority on communities.
Streetsmart aims to change the factors considered in the decision-making process so that climate change, public health, and equity are fully accounted for in order to create healthy, equitable, and climate-friendly communities.
Streetsmart draws from research in political science, knowledge utilization, and evidence-based policy to inform our approach:
Streetsmart aims to change the factors considered in the decision-making process so that climate change, public health, and equity are fully accounted for in order to create healthy, equitable, and climate-friendly communities.
Streetsmart draws from research in political science, knowledge utilization, and evidence-based policy to inform our approach:
- The aim of evidence-based policy is to inform democratic decision-making.
- Evidence must be embedded in compelling narratives to be influential.
- Evidence is necessary but not sufficient. Professional judgment and the voices of residents are equally important for decision-making.
- The type of evidence matters: systematic reviews offer strong internal validity but lack generalizability to different contexts. Context-based evidence is important to understand what truly works for different places and populations.
- Community engagement is therefore essential to successfully planning, designing, and implementing plans and projects.
The Research
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Streetsmart rests primarily on four sets of research reviews. The site is not intended to be a comprehensive review of the literature regarding transportation, climate change, public health, and equity, although additional citations beyond the primary reviews are provided.
Research related to physical activity, walking, and bicycling draws from the Community Guide and County Health Rankings & Roadmaps. These research synthesis efforts involve an extensive review process. For example, this American Journal of Preventive Medicine article written by the Community Preventive Services Task Force explains the Community Guide systematic review methodology.
Research related to vehicle miles traveled and greenhouse gas emissions draws from Research on the Impacts of Transportation and Land Use Related Policies, commissioned by the California Air Resources Board in response to California Senate Bill 375. Streetsmart also draws from Mark Stevens' meta-regression analysis as described in the journal article, Does Compact Development Make People Drive Less? (paywall) and interpretations of the study expressed in reaction articles in the same issue. |
Photo: Unsplash/ Ed Robertson
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Research synthesis efforts review all the literature on the topic while considering selection bias, measurement bias, and other threats to validity that might be introduced through each individual study's research designs. Systematic reviews offer strong evidence about the relationship between an intervention (e.g., bicycle infrastructure) and an outcome (e.g., bicycling). However, systematic review findings may not be generalizable to real-life applications, in part because the context of the strategy is not accounted for. With the absence of "practice-based evidence" it is especially critical to have community engagement for getting planning and design interventions right. Streetsmart will increasingly draw from context-based research approaches to offer better contextual guidance. Examples include realist evaluation--which asks "What works, for whom, in what respects, to what extent, and in what contexts?"--case study research, and Community Based Participatory Research projects.