Marc
has been very active in the field of active living
and developing communities where residents can be
more active. He has recently co-authored two related
articles in the Journal of the American Planning
Association (Getting To And From School: Urban Form,
Distance, and The Role Of Planning In Transportation
Decision Making, and The Relationship of Walkable
and Safe Communities to Individual’s Health.
Marc is very excited by the prospects
of using GIS tools such as personal digital assistants
(PDAs) for gathering data at the community level.
"We need tools that can be community based,
that people can use to quickly grasp the kinds of
barriers in our built environments that are stopping
children from walking to school, or making it more
difficult for seniors to get to public transit,"
he says.
In the past four years, Marc has
been devising and using various assessment tools
that have been used for a variety of data-gathering
exercises in the Eugene, Oregon, community. To read
more about his work at this web site devoted to
community-based GIS, click
here.
When he's not pushing databases around,
Marc likes to travel with his family. As of this
writing he just returned from a journey with family
and friends to Bryce and Zion parks. "It got
to 105.6 inside our un-air conditioned vehicle (a
classic Vanagon). We had fun, though, and enjoyed
the desert beauty." Between his return from
the deserts of Utah and the Pro Walk/Pro Bike conference,
Marc is sliding in a quick trip to Alaska, so he
can experience the other end of the climate spectrum.
This will be Marc's first Pro Walk/Pro
Bike conference. Watch for him...he'll be the guy
with his eyes glued to a PDA, assessing the walkability
of the Monona Terrace Convention Center. |
