Lawrence Douglas Frank (April 14, 1961) is an American and Canadian urban planner, researcher, and educator. Frank helped popularize the term walkability through his work, which established quantitative links among urban design, time spent driving in a car versus walking and biking, taking public transit, and public health, especially obesity. Frank has been a university professor for over 30 years and founded and is president of Urban Design 4 Health. He consults with government agencies, NGOs, and decision makers to predict travel, greenhouse gases, chronic disease, and economic impacts of land use and transportation policies.
Frank has published over 200 peer-reviewed articles, led over $20 million in primary research, co-authored two books, and contributed four book chapters. Frank's work has been cited 58,699 times, he was the top-cited scholar in transport policy, and was the fourth most-cited scholar in urban planning. He had the second-highest h-index among urban planning faculty globally, and was ranked by Clarivate as being in the top 1% of highly cited researchers in the social sciences.
Frank has served on the board of AmericaWalks since 2016. He was named by the University of Arizona's College of Architecture, Planning, and Landscape Architecture as Alumnus of the Year and featured in a biographical video.
Early life and education Frank was born on April 14, 1961 in Rochester, New York to Marilyn E. (née Ellowitch) and Irwin N. Frank. Irwin (born March 24, 1927) was a urologist, professor, and chief medical officer at the University of Rochester Medical Center. Marilyn (born July 4, 1931) was a fundraiser for health charities and founded Friends of Strong Memorial Hospital and the National Kidney Foundation serving Upstate and Western New York.
Frank was the youngest of three siblings. His oldest brother Gary David was born on September 5, 1955 and died on September 22, 2024. His brother Steven was born in 1957.
Frank graduated in 1985 with a bachelor's in Landscape Architecture from the University of Arizona's School of Renewable Natural Resources. In 1990 he earned a Master of Science in Civil Engineering Transportation Studies from the University of Washington's School of Civil Engineering. Frank continued at the University of Washington to earn a Ph.D. in Urban Design and Planning from the College of Architecture and Urban Planning in 1993.
Employment After earning his Ph.D., Frank became a transportation planning specialist in 1993 for the Office of Urban Mobility in the Washington State Department of Transportation. In 1995, Frank took an assistant professor position at Georgia Tech in the College of Architecture City Planning Program. In 2001, Frank became an associate professor in the same department.
In 1997, Frank founded Urban Design 4 Health. The company was active as of January 2026 with Frank as its president.
Starting in 2003, Frank became associate professor at the University of British Columbia (UBC) as the Bombardier Chair in the School of Community and Regional Planning. In 2010, he became a full UBC professor, added the School of Population and Public Health to his portfolio, and became director of the Health and Community Design Lab at UBC.
In 2020, Frank left UBC and became a professor in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the University of California, San Diego.
1994: Urban Design and Walking, Transit Use, Driving Frank had 16 articles, books, or book chapters cited nearly 1,000 times or more between 1994 and 2025. The earliest among these was Frank's dissertation research, published in 1994 with co-author Gary Pivo (1,763 citations): Impacts of Mixed Use and Density on Utilization of Three Modes of Travel: Single-Occupant Vehicle, Transit, and Walking. The authors reported how single occupancy vehicle usage for work and shopping trips decreased, and walking and transit use increased, as employment and population density and land-use mix increased. The study laid the groundwork for measuring walkability, or how people walked and rode public transportation more when they lived in areas with more concentrated housing and jobs. These quantitative findings strongly implied that urban planning could be used to increase walking and transit use by increasing housing and business density. They provided new quantitative support for urban planners to use higher density designs.
2001: Urban Design and Personal Health Frank co-authored two frequently cited articles in 2001. One was Environmental and Societal Factors Affect Food Choice and Physical Activity: Rationale, Influences, and Leverage Points (1,055 citations). The study was authored by 13 experts who formed a panel to integrate research on personal health and urban design. The group engaged in three knowledge mapping exercises. They proposed policy priorities to improve personal health by influencing the choices people make regarding physical activity and nutrition. The group highlighted the complex nature of physical activity and nutrition decision making, and the personal and social resistance to change. They called for expansive additional research.
The other was published with Peter Engelke: The Built Environment and Human Activity Patterns: Exploring the Impacts of Urban Form on Public Health (975 citations). It linked urban design to health in three steps. First, a literature review conclusively indicated that significant public health benefits could be achieved through increased levels of daily, moderate physical activity such as walking and biking. Second, the authors showed that moderate physical activity can be increased through urban design. Third, they drew attention to unfortunate urban design trends that favor motorized travel and minimize or undermine walking and biking. In contrast, they pointed to cities (often European) that use bike lanes, reduce vehicle speed limits, restrict parking in downtown areas, etc. and consequently have more walking and biking. The authors concluded with an appeal for more rigorous quantitative research using Geographic Information System (GIS) data to measure urban form, and GPS and accelerometry data to track travel and activity levels.
2003: Community Design and Walking, Cycling
In 2003, Frank was the lead author of his first book, with co-authors Peter Engelke and Tom Schmid: Health and Community Design: The Impact of the Built Environment on Physical Activity (1,221 citations). The book examines how community design encourages or discourages physical activity. It draws upon multi-disciplinary studies on the relationships between urban design and public health. Factors are specified that influence personal decisions about physical activity and modes of travel. The authors identify how land use patterns can be changed to help overcome barriers to physical activity, and recommend future research.
Frank's all-time most frequently cited article (3,396 citations) was published in 2003 and co-authored with Brian Saelens and James Sallis: Environmental Correlates of Walking and Cycling: Findings From the Transportation, Urban Design, and Planning Literature. The article targeted health and physical activity professionals, and summarized key terms and research methods used by urban design and transportation professionals. The article explained that quasi-experimental research designs were necessary in urban design. It showed that walking and cycling trips increased in high- versus low-walkable neighborhoods. Population density was found to be the most consistent positive correlate with walking trip frequency, although a mix of residential, commercial, and park density could ultimately prove to be more significant. Future research was called for that integrated environmental variables into health and physical activity research.
2004: Community Design, Physical Activity, and Obesity In 2004, Frank had three oft-cited publications, including his second most-cited publication (2,641 citations): Obesity Relationships with Community Design, Physical Activity, and Time Spent in Cars. This study, co-authored with Martin A. Andresen, and Thomas L. Schmid, summarized the analysis of travel survey data from 10,878 participants in the Atlanta region between 2000 and 2002. The team found that the odds of obesity decreased by 12.2% for each quartile increase in residential density, and by 4.8% for each additional kilometer walked per day. Each additional hour spent in a car per day increased the odds of obesity by 6%. Black participants reported they walked nearly twice as much as their white counterparts yet were far more likely to be obese. The study presented the first assessment of urban forms around each participant's place of residence, with travel patterns, body mass index (BMI), and obesity status.
In a 2026 commentary on the Frank et al. 2004 Obesity Relationships article, deputy editor of American Journal of Preventive Medicine Margaret B. Nolan describes it as: ... remarkably prescient. It manages to foreshadow the next 2 decades of obesity and physical activity research, as well as introduce new methods of characterizing and considering the built environment's role in chronic disease. ... The concept of "connectedness," illustrated so beautifully in Figure 1 of the paper by Frank et al., has guided the planning and execution of thousands of neighborhoods across the U.S. since 2004.
His second highly-cited 2004 publication (1,400 citations) was a book written with co-authors Howard Frumkin and Richard J. Jackson: Urban Sprawl and Public Health: Designing, Planning, and Building for Healthy Communities. The authors examine the evidence surrounding how urban sprawl impacts human health and well-being, and discuss how to improve public health through better design, land use, and transportation.
Frank's third highly-cited 2004 publication (986 citations) with co-authors James F. Sallis, Brian E. Saelens, and M. Katherine Kraft was: Active Transportation and Physical Activity: Opportunities for Collaboration on Transportation and Public Health Research. The authors' literature summary showed that transportation research consistently links neighborhood environment (e.g., residential density) to walking and cycling, and that increased walking and cycling and reduced car riding are tied to health benefits such as lower obesity risk and cleaner air.
2005: Enhanced Activity, Walkability, and Nutrition Frank published two frequently cited articles in 2005. The first one (2,222 citations) with co-authors Schmid, Sallis, Chapman, and Saelens, was: Linking Objectively Measured Physical Activity with Objectively Measured Urban Form: Findings from SMARTRAQ. This study enhanced physical activity measurement by using accelerometers with objective GIS-based built environment metrics (rather than self-reporting). It was conducted over a two-day period for 357 adults in Atlanta. It also integrated multiple community design variables into a walkability index. The study found that participants in the most walkable areas of Atlanta were 2.4 times more likely to get recommended amounts of physical activity. The authors concluded that people who live in better connected, more compact, mixed-use neighborhoods are more likely to be active enough to achieve health benefits.
Frank's second highly cited article in 2005 (1,875 citations) with co-authors Glanz, Sallis, and Saelens was: Healthy Nutrition Environments: Concepts and Measures. Given an obesity epidemic in the US, the authors explore ways to measure how living environments impact nutrition. They proposed four types of nutrition environments: community (e.g., outlet types and accessibility), organization (e.g., home, school, work), consumer (availability and price of healthy food options), and information (media, advertising). Measures and studies that offer the most promise as indicated from prior research for each nutritional environment were identified.