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Neighborhoods
That Encourage People to Exercise
Inviting, tree-lined sidewalks. Speed bumps that make roads
safe for bikers. Zoning laws that inspire people to walk
to work.
This kind of community might actually end the nation's obesity
epidemic, and all the attendant diseases that come with
it.
That's what experts in a variety of fields are beginning
to think, and they're joining forces to try and create places
to live that are also good for your health.
"There's a new subfield, a marriage of urban planning
and public health," says Reid Ewing, a research professor
at the National Center for Smart Growth at the University
of Maryland. In the past five years, experts have begun
to realize that one's physical environment may be directly
linked to one's level of physical activity, he explains.
That connection may become critical as Americans grapple
with a collective weight problem that many now believe rivals
smoking as a major public health issue. As a matter of fact,
more Americans are expected to die from obesity-related
causes than from smoking by the end of the decade, according
to the American Journal of Health Promotion.
This crisis didn't happen overnight.
The sprawling cities of the second half of this century
have slowly but surely led to a world where it's almost
impossible to get anywhere without a car. Walking and biking
have become something people save for the weekends, not
a daily activity that would consistently burn precious calories
and keep pounds off. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention estimates that a difference of 100 calories
of exercise per person per day -- a 20-minute walk -- could
eliminate the obesity epidemic.
That's where urban planning initiatives might make a difference,
and cities and towns across the country are beginning to
apply for grants to make their communities more pedestrian-friendly
and bring daily physical activity back into peoples' lives.
The war on smoking is serving as a model for the current
push to change environments. Instead of educating individuals,
strategists are turning their attention to changing how
communities are designed. As policies such as cigarette
taxes have succeeded with smoking, perhaps efforts to change
the character of where people live and work will succeed
when it comes to excess weight and its associated ills,
which include diabetes and heart disease.
Given that the National Institutes of Health has found nearly
two-thirds of Americans are overweight and almost a third
are obese (with roughly 300,000 adult deaths in the United
States each year attributable to bad diet and sedentary
behavior), the task is daunting. That's not to mention the
18.2 million people in the United States who have diabetes,
5.2 million of whom don't know it. Then there's heart disease:
61.8 million had it in 2000, according to the American Heart
Association. And with 945,836 people dying from cardiovascular
disease in that same year, it is this country's leading
killer.
However, there's good reason to try to reverse this frightening
trend.
A study conducted by Ewing that appeared in the September
issue of the American Journal of Health Promotion found
a relationship between urban sprawl, inactivity, obesity
and, most important, morbidity. People who call the suburbs
home weigh an average of 6 pounds more than those living
in compact areas, and they were also more likely to be obese.
One likely explanation for this phenomenon is that people
in sprawling areas tend to drive more than those in compact
areas, where they tend to walk. "We realized that the
way we build communities may be a major contributor,"
Ewing says. "We're building for automobiles as opposed
to pedestrians."
Adds John Pucher, a professor of urban planning and transportation
at Rutgers University: "Currently, we make automobile
use extremely easy, convenient and cheap. A car becomes
such an irresistible temptation even for those short trips.
That's one of the issues."
So, one of the main thrusts of planners has been to make
suburbs resemble small towns at the turn of the 19th century,
which is to say places where people want to walk.
Improving the sidewalks is a strong first step. Pucher cites
the example of Old Pasadena, Calif., which one Web site
now describes as "L.A.'s premier pedestrian neighborhood."
The town installed parking meters and used all the revenues
to beautify the streets, including benches, planters, palm
trees and twice-monthly steam cleanings.
"You can't even recognize it," Pucher says. "There's
no question that we can much, much improve the quality of
our sidewalks by making the sidewalk portion cleaner, replacing
sidewalks that are old, uneven or have holes, putting in
a few trees, benches, putting in more pedestrian-level kind
of lighting. That's not rocket science, and it's not even
that expensive."
Traffic calming is another inexpensive and relatively simple
enhancement. This includes speed bumps and curves that slow
down cars and make a neighborhood safer for pedestrians
and cyclists. Bike lanes and bike paths, and even auto-free
zones, are other initiatives that are being considered and
implemented in different regions.
But it has to go beyond that, experts say.
"It's not enough to just build sidewalks or bike paths.
Land-use patterns have to be supportive of walking and biking,"
Ewing says.
Zoning codes need to allow a more innovative mix of uses,
Pucher says. An obvious example is to combine shopping and
residential districts so people can walk or cycle to work.
"That's being worked on right now," he says. "It's
not a huge tidal wave, but it's promising."
Mortgage breaks are another incentive. The Location Efficient
Mortgage, for instance, increases borrowing power for people
who chose to buy a home in an urban community. The net effect:
People buy houses in neighborhoods where they can walk to
stores, schools, parks and public transportation. The program
is currently available in Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles,
San Francisco and Orange County, Calif.
Having an environment in place that encourages exercise
is only part of the equation: "People need to get the
message that it is really dangerous for their health not
getting that exercise," Pucher says.
"Eventually, the evidence may accumulate to the point
where in several years just about everyone thinks there's
a connection between community design and health,"
Ewing adds.
More information
Learn more about connecting health and community design
at Active
Living By Design.
Article Source: HealthDay
Article Author: N/A
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