In Conversation With an Expert: Dan Burden of Blue Zones

Dan Burden, working on a crosswalk in Hawaii.

“One of the first things everyone should do is take a step outside and look at what makes your street, neighborhood, and city walkable. And then what’s taking away from that,” Dan Burden recommended in a 2019 episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution, a podcast produced by Strong Towns. For Burden, it’s no question that the built environment overlaps with—and affects—our individual and communal health and longevity. In fact, much of his career has centered around this idea.

For over 15 years, Dan Burden has worked with Blue Zones, an organization inspired by the places where people live the longest and fullest lives. He joined Blue Zones as a consultant, later became part of its staff, and just three months ago, was pronounced the organization’s inaugural fellow, graduating to the title of Director of Innovation and Inspiration. For his accomplishments, he was recently named #58 on Planetizen’s list of the 100 Most Influential Urbanists of all time.

As an expert in place-making and street safety, Dan was invited to help examine a fatal crash in Hyattsville, Maryland, which was nominated for the Crash Analysis Studio.

Strong Towns caught up with Dan and asked him what excites him about his work, what challenges exist in ameliorating our built environment today, and what stood out in the crash he analyzed. (The following conversation was edited for clarity.)

What are you seeing in your work today that gives you hope?

For one, people today want lower speeds on their streets! I’m hearing more and more how people are advocating for 20 or 15 mph, rather than 25 and up. 

A good example is Crested Butte, Colorado: it’s a small, one-square-mile town at over 9000 feet in altitude, with only 1,600 residents, but it gives me a lot of hope. They want to reduce the vehicular speed in their community to 10 mph—I love it! I’m always inspired by communities that have cultivated the right political dynamic where the leaders are held accountable to their voters and they focus on the local streets rather than regional throughput.

Also, when I started, I could go before any city council—let’s say it was a council of six or eight people—and there’d be at most one person listening. Today, 100% of all elected leaders will listen to the solutions I’m championing. They might not have the courage to carry them out, but they want to know the solutions. I feel night and day that today we’re in a much better arena.

Through Blue Zones and independently, you've been credited with transforming several downtowns. What has that process looked like?

Well, what we do is we urge people to come listen, understand, and be the backers of the ideas that’ll transform their street. Community buy-in is key.

Ultimately, we’re asking a community to be brave. Change is scary, but here are 16 other towns like yours who have done it and are grateful they made the changes. It made all the difference in the world.

Greenville, SC. (Source: Dom Nozzi.)

Do you have some examples?

In Farmington, New Mexico, folks remarked how many stores downtown were closed, not selling much, and the main road was a four-lane behemoth. When I saw it, I said, “With the amount of traffic you have, you’d be much better off with two lanes.” Motorists were doing up to 40 mph—even 50 mph—on that road to beat the traffic lights, which is lethal. 

Farmington, NM in 2012:

Farmington, NM in 2021:

They took my recommendations to heart and now it’s one of the most sought-after main streets in the region. Business has recovered and the social life—the reason you have a main street—returned just beautifully! We were able to demonstrate the opportunity there and the community made a small but sound bet.

Hamburg, New York, is another example. The community was very active in reimagining what their main street could look like and it’s awesome.

How do I go about transforming my own environment?

A lot of it is determining the opportunities available in the built environment. I remember doing work in Muscatine, Iowa, very well. When we got down there, you could immediately see there’s no place for a pedestrian to cross for over 1,000 feet, and that the intersections were so wide. This was just the principal road through the town. We walked down to the waterfront and there were five lanes and nearly no traffic—this was along the Mississippi river! I said before you do anything, you’ve got to tackle the riverfront property. And they did. They’ve totally rebuilt the waterfront area. Now there’s even a boutique hotel and local businesses clearly began reinvesting in the area, as a whole.

What would you say are some of the biggest challenges in our built environment today?

All the different professions talking to themselves and thinking that because they are experts, they know all of the answers. It’s just never been true. Engineers have gotten away with convincing everyone that making things bigger will bring more traffic in front of the store and make the environment safer for over 50 years. In any case, people are waking up and recognizing what makes their place better.

As a national expert on issues regarding street safety, you were invited to provide your insights at our latest Crash Analysis Studio, which centered on a fatal crash in Hyattsville, Maryland. Did anything stand out to you in that crash?

The biggest challenge was getting all of the data—the full crash record—in time for the studio. As someone who believes in science and has a background in forensics, I don’t want to render an opinion until I have all of my facts straight. In this case, the county had inconsistencies regarding details like which way the car was going, its speed, and so on. Furthermore, it’s in a county’s best interest to provide a complete crash record to anyone willing to investigate it at their own expense. It’s just frustrating that it was so hard to get that information our way, initially.

What about the area of the crash?

This road appears to have been a perfect candidate for a road diet, and [the Department of Transportation] clearly takes pride in what they did, but for them to not be a little bolder and not go for a transformative road diet is ultimately irresponsible. 

In the end, when you look at this road you ask yourself: Why did the pedestrian have to cross four wide lanes? With the traffic this road sees, I’d say two would be enough.

Other than that, it’s important to recognize that this crash happened at night when driver visibility is compromised. If you’re going the posted speed limit (30 mph on Ager Road), or slightly higher, what and how much you see decreases even more. Most motorists drive innocently, observing the design speed of the road, and anything that conspires to compromise their visibility can make for a very dangerous situation.

In the end, we’re designing for people. We’re designing intersections for people as young as 8 and as old as 80. We need to keep that human component in the forefront.

---

---