Building healthy communities for children: the transportation link.

Two concepts are essential to a definition of a healthy community: social justice and ecological sustainability. These principles must be at the heart of creating healthy communities, cities, and regions. Children and young people are an integral part of socially just and ecologically sustainable communities. Transportation and land-use policies are critical tools for shaping healthy communities, cities, and regions. The health impacts of the private automobile and its full cost to society, including public health and environmental damage costs, need to be clearly understood. The developing physiology of children put them at particular risk to medical impacts of automobile emissions and air pollution. The public health impacts of transportation and land-use policies cannot be divorced from the planning and decisionmaking process. Transit, bicycle, and pedestrian-oriented transportation modes can serve the transportation needs of children and can stimulate land uses more conducive to a healthy social, economic, and environmental quality of life. Social justice and ecological sustainability are essential for a healthy community. Social justice can be defined as meeting people's basic needs equitably, that is, fairly and justly. Social justice demands that societal institutions be accessible, responsible and accountable to all people in society regardless of social or economic standing. Ecological sustainability is based on principles of ecology, which recognize the connectedness and interrelationship of all