By Allie Gavette
Parks create not only a place for community building, but for physical activity to promote a healthy lifestyle for those of all ages. Exercise and health have always gone hand in hand, and people are now doing city planning with citizens’ health in mind, creating more open spaces, including parks, to encourage a healthy, active lifestyle. After all, it is widely acknowledged that physical activity is shown to reduce problems of aging, obesity, and diabetes.
G Magazine recently published an article in their health section in which green neighborhoods were noted as having lower childhood obesity rates than in neighborhoods without ample places that provide opportunities for physical activity. The study they reference not only showed a lower weight gain over a two-year period, but also improvements including cognitive functioning and reduced attention deficit hyperactivity disorder symptoms. In this way, green spaces improve physical as well as mental health.
Another project, the National Policy & Legal Analysis Network to Prevent Childhood Obesity (NPLAN), cites physical activity as an addition to improving performance in schools. They choose to focus their objective toward the epicenter of the issue: from childcare through high school.
Even the First Lady, Michelle Obama, has gotten on board with this idea, making the fight against childhood obesity her primary goal during Barak Obama’s presidency. Her project, called “Let’s Move,” will “give parents the support they need, provide healthier food in schools, help our kids to be more physically active, and make healthy, affordable food available in every part of our country.” On its highly interactive web site, there is a whole section devoted to the importance of physical activity. Although the project (and website) is still in progress of being fully developed, it shows a lot of promise. One of the suggestions to get kids moving is by building more playgrounds and parks.
More and more activist groups are taking these needs into account when lobbying for certain aspects of city planning. A group called Active Living By Design has a mission that revolves around achieving this across many cities in the US. This project, based in Chapel Hill, NC, has expanded all the way across the country, even reaching Portland, OR. In their mission statement, they explain, “Public health literature has shown that physical activity intervention programs that are organized within an ecologic framework can have the biggest potential to improve the health of populations.” Using this idea, with backup from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, they have created a template for achieving a healthy way of life for people, led by people.
As Active Living By Design’s “vision” says, “All communities are healthy communities where routine physical activity and healthy eating are accessible, easy and affordable to everyone.”
Article from G Magazine: “Green Neighborhoods Lower Childhood Obesity“
CDC-Active Community Environments (ACEs)
National Policy and Legal Analysis Network to Prevent Childhood Obesity
[...] increase test scores, reduce childhood obesity and create healthier community relationships? Our next story explained how cities outside Eugene are discovering some not-so-obvious effects of good development [...]