A healthy community provides opportunities for people of all ages and abilities to engage in routine daily physical activity in a safe environment. This can include infrastructure that allows people to safely walk or bicycle to work or school, safe places for children to play, and opportunities for families and neighbors to interact and be active together. Local governments can help make the healthy choice the easy choice by addressing community design issues.
Decades of automobile-dominated planning and a shift from active to more sedentary jobs have helped take physical activity out of people’s daily routines. Analysis of data from the 2003–2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) showed that less than 5 percent of adults meet the minimum guideline for physical activity. The Surgeon General and the National Institutes of Health have identified physical inactivity as a key contributor to morbidity and the incidence of diseases including cardiovascular disease, cancer, and diabetes. It is estimated that physical inactivity is a primary factor in more than 400,000 deaths each year in the United States (Mokad et al. 2000).
The majority of people are dependent on the automobile for travel. The 2001 Nationwide Personal Travel Survey found that, on a daily basis, Americans averaged 4 trips per day and roughly 40 miles of travel; 35 miles of this total were conducted in a personal vehicle. Single-use zoning has segregated residences, schools, jobs, places of worship, services, and shopping from each other and increased the distances in-between. The combination of auto-focused development and poor land-use planning has created community environments that are unsafe and unfriendly for pedestrians and bicyclists.
In recent years, public health professionals have become increasingly aware of the effects of community design and planning on citizens’ health and wellbeing. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) partially attribute a sedentary lifestyle to current land use and transportation patterns. Studies have also suggested that people are more likely to meet recommended levels of moderate physical activity if they can incorporate such activity into their daily routine since time and schedule are the major stated deterrents to being physically active (Kirby and Hollander, 2004). As a result, public health professionals are urging the development of activity-friendly communities that encourage people to walk and bicycle as part of their everyday travel. An editorial in the October 1999 Journal of the American Medical Association stated that:
Reliance on physical activity as an alternative to car use is less likely to occur in many cities and towns unless they are designed or retrofitted to permit walking or bicycling. The location of schools, work sites and shopping areas near residential areas will require substantial changes in community or regional design (Koplan and Dietz, 1999).
Other issues that relate to physical activity and built environment include:
By promoting active living, we can help make the healthy choice the easy choice, and create more livable and sustainable communities.
Smart Growth and Health
Planning for Smart Growth Development
Street Design and Walkability
Overcoming Barriers to Walkable Communities
Additional LGC resources can be found at our Center for Livable Communities.
Leadership for Healthy Communities
A national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation that supports state and local government leaders in efforts to reduce childhood obesity through public policies that promote active living, healthy eating and access to healthy foods.