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Health and Physical Activity

 

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 300,000 deaths each year in the United States (McGinnis and Foege 1993).

The majority of people are dependent on the automobile for travel — even recreational 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. Additionally, single-use zoning has isolated and segregated residences, schools, jobs, places of worship, services, and shopping. The combination of auto-supportive development and poor land-use planning has created community environments that are unsafe and/or unfriendly for pedestrians and bicyclists to use.

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 found that people are more likely to meet recommended levels of moderate physical activity if they can incorporate such activity into their daily routine (needs reference?). 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.

Resources

The Local Government Commission has developed two guidebooks that discuss how to design or retrofit streets and neighborhoods to make them more supportive of walking and bicycling.

• Street Design Guidelines for Healthy Neighborhoods was written by Dan Burden, director of Walkable Communities, with assistance from a team that included two traffic engineers, an urban designer and a citizen planner. It discusses how to build low-volume, slow speed traditional residential streets.
  Streets and Sidewalks, People and Cars: A Citizens' Guide to Traffic Calming, also by Dan Burden, provides detailed information for local government officials and residents on how to retrofit streets to slow traffic.

Our series of 4-page illustrated fact sheets with a Focus on Livable Communities provide a brief, easy-to-read overview on the following key topics related to walkable communities:

• The Economic Benefits of Walkable Communities
• Why People Don't Walk and What City Planners Can Do About It
• Land Use Planning for Safe, Crime-Free Neighborhoods
• Designing Safe Streets and Neighborhoods
• New Thinking for a New Transportation Age
• US DOT Supports Walking and Bicycling

Single copies of these fact sheets are available free from the LGC and can also be downloaded in PDF format from our web page. Bulk copies for wider distribution are also available at a nominal fee.

An additional fact sheet, "Transportation Tools to Improve Children's Health and Mobility", highlights engineering solutions for more walkable communities.

Web Links

• America WALKs (www.americawalks.org)
• CA Department of Health Services – Safe Routes to Schools (www.dhs.ca.gov/routes2school)
• California Walk to School Day (www.cawalktoschool.com)
• Center For Disease Control, Department of Nutrition and Physical Activity (www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/index.htm)
• National Center for Bicycling and Walking (www.bikewalk.org)
• Walk to School Day - USA (www.walktoschool-usa.org)
• Walkable Communities, Inc. (www.walkable.org)