14 American Journal of Health Promotion THE S CIENCE OF HEALTH PROMOTION Conceptual Approach Opportunities for Integrating Public Health and Urban Planning Approaches to Promote Active Community Environments Christine M. Hoehner, Laura K. Brennan, Ross C. Brownson, Susan L. Handy, Richard Killingsworth Synopsis The growing emphasis on promoting environmental change as a means to increase physical activity has motivated conversation and collaboration between researchers and practitioners in the fields of public health and urban planning. Although these fields share similar objectives, their methodological approaches for exam- ining the association between the environment and behavior often differ in significant ways. To facilitate communication, this arti- cle discusses ways these fields can collaborate in developing and applying conceptual frameworks, adopting behavioral and envi- ronmental measures, and strengthening study designs. By collabo- rating to build synergism in research and dissemination, public health and urban planning professionals can enhance efforts to increase the number of communities that promote active living. (Am J Health Promot 2003;18[1]14–20.) INTRODUCTION Following their combined efforts to improve living conditions in the overcrowded and disease-ridden cities of the late 19th century, the disciplines of public health and urban planning largely went their separate ways. Decades later, the two fields have reunited with respect to a considerably different issue: How can we get peo- ple to walk and bicycle more? For the public health field, this question is linked to growing concerns over Christine M. Hoehner, Laura K. Brennan, and Ross C. Brown- son are with Prevention Research Center, Saint Louis University School of Public Health, St Louis, Missouri. Susan L. Handy is with Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California at Davis, Davis, California. Richard E. Killings- worth is with Active Living by Design National Program Office, School of Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Send reprint requests to Christine M. Hoehner, Prevention Research Center, Saint Louis University School of Public Health, 3545 Lafayette Ave, St Louis, MO 63104. This manuscript was submitted November 27, 2002; revisions were requested July 4, 2003; the manuscript was accepted for publication July 7, 2003. Copyright  2003 by American Journal of Health Promotion, Inc. 0890-1171/03/$5.00 + 0 the high prevalence of inactivity, obesity, and associated chronic diseases. 1–4 For the urban planning field, this question is often tied to increasing concerns over con- gestion and the environmental impacts of automobile use. Until now, the two fields have primarily focused on different strategies for addressing these problems—pub- lic health on individual, interpersonal, and sometimes multilevel interventions and urban planning on mea- sures that shape the built environment. Yet, the growing recognition that both approaches are essential for achieving significant changes in behavior has motivated collaboration between researchers within the two fields. To stimulate discussion among researchers and practi- tioners, this article reviews and recommends improve- ments for key conceptual and methodological ap- proaches used by public health and urban planning re- searchers for studying the physical activity and travel be- havior of adults. The goal is to present opportunities for creating synergism in building evidence for active community environments. This discussion will focus on two specific concentrations within the broad fields of public health and urban plan- ning, namely, physical activity research and travel behavior research. Physical activity research comprises a specific area within the field of public health—a set of disciplines that emphasize research and practice concerned with the health of populations. 5 Within the broad discipline of ur- ban planning, travel behavior research combines the in- terests of two distinct fields, namely, transportation plan- ning and urban design, each concerned with studying the influence of the built environment on human behavior (Figure 1). Travel behavior researchers can also be found in a variety of other disciplines, including engineering and geography. LINKING CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS AND THEORIES To begin the process of acquiring and building evi- dence, answers to the following questions are essential: What factors in the community environment need to be examined? How do these factors relate to behavior and to each other? How can active community environments be