Creating Healthy, Active Communities

By Jennifer Atkins

It’s that time of year again. The time when the weather warms and the rain stops, or at least slows down long enough for everyone to get outside and enjoy the rebirth of nature. The flowers are beginning to bloom, the birds are singing. Walking or biking on a warm spring day is wonderful and refreshing, one of those “little joys” in life. It’s the perfect time of year for active living.

Health advocates define active living as “a way of life that integrates physical activity into daily routines.” But that’s not to say that active living is only about sweating on a treadmill, at a weight machine, or in a spinning class. In fact, you can participate in active living and never set foot inside a locker room. In some ways, it’s about thinking outside the gym.

Then what is active living? Well, the goal is “to accumulate at least 30 minutes of activity each day.” A key word here is “accumulate.” That means you don’t have to block out a half hour on your day-timer every day to devote to a workout. Active living is about walking or bicycling for transportation and pleasure, as well as exercise. It’s about playing in the park with your dog or kids. It’s about working in the yard and taking the stairs instead of the elevator. In short, active living is about doing little things throughout the day that don’t feel like exercise, but which together have the same impact on our health and bodies as a 30-minute workout at the gym would have.

Now think again about that spring day. Does your community make it easy or difficult for you to be active and take full advantage of the weather? For example, is there a safe and complete network of sidewalks for you to walk down? Are there community destinations within walking or biking distance to go to? Do you have convenient access to trails, parks, and outdoor recreation spaces?

You may not have thought about it, but we all have personal experiences about how community design impacts where we go and how we get there. Although we don’t tend to think of them as related, many community design characteristics — such as land use mix, concentration of housing, transportation routes, access to outdoor recreation, and others — have significant influence over the decisions we make about whether or not to walk, bike, or be physically active. They can negatively impact our ability to be active because they can limit our opportunities to incorporate it into our daily routines. If people live far away from where they work or shop, often driving seems the only alternative. When there are few safe environments for pedestrians and bicyclists, people may get discouraged and choose not to use the bike lanes, sidewalks, trails and walking paths. When our choices are limited, active living becomes more of a challenge.

That’s where The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s national program Active Living by Design (ALbD) comes in. The ALbD program seeks to make it easy for people to be physically active by promoting changes in local community design, transportation, and architecture. To achieve that goal, ALbD created 25 grants that were awarded to Community Partnerships around the country in November 2004. Each Community Partnership is comprised of organizations representing multiple disciplines, such as planning, transportation, health, architecture, urban design, real estate development, housing, public safety, education and other related fields. Each Community Partnership is working on its own unique project that addresses the needs of the local communities in the area.

We in the Pacific Northwest are lucky enough to have ALbD-funded projects in both Seattle and Portland. In Portland, several projects are underway with the help of the ALbD grant. The Oregon Coalition for Promoting Physical Activity has partnered with the American Heart Association — Pacific/Mountain Affiliate to oversee projects in three Portland Metro area neighborhoods.

One project focuses on promoting and building community support for the Springwater Corridor Trail that runs through the Lents neighborhood in outer SE Portland. ALbD partners, including local community groups and Portland Parks and Recreation, are working to increase the use of the trail as a bicycle and pedestrian destination through outreach activities, making physical improvements to the trail, and fund-raising for long-term capital improvements.

Outreach projects in Lents include encouraging the use of the trail as a safe walking route to and from schools, education of residents about the significance of the natural resources surrounding the trail, and creating neighborhood biking and walking loops that bring trail users into the Lents community.

Improvements planned for the trail include benches, artwork, a community tool shed for bicycle repairs, public restrooms, and ultimately a trailhead interpretive center that is a destination point and access to the trail for residents of the Lents neighborhood and of the surrounding region.

Transportation is the focus of the second Portland ALbD project. Using a program called TravelSmart, The Portland Department of Transportation Options and other partners have been working in the Interstate corridor of North Portland — site of the latest MAX light rail line — to identify residents who are interested in making changes to the ways they travel. TravelSmart then helps these interested individuals to think about their travel options and provides them with information about how to use public transit systems, bike, walk, or carpool for some of their trips.

And finally, the third project will take advantage of the recent extension of Metro’s Urban Growth Boundary in the Damascus area southeast of Portland. There, partner organizations are focusing on influencing development in the early stages of urban design and planning to advocate for a future community that supports physical activity and community health. Active living principles being promoted in the process include the development of mixed-use centers and location of housing close to jobs, a well-connected transportation system to accommodate a variety of travel modes, and an integrated system of trails, parks, and open spaces.

In Seattle dozens of ALbD partners came together to create the Active Seattle project. Many of these partner organizations already included active living as a primary focus for the organization’s mission. Through the Active Seattle project, these partners are focusing on creating overlapping, mutually reinforcing programs and messages.

In addition, partners are working with five neighborhoods to focus on community walkability. The residents of these neighborhoods, people who come from nearly all walks of life, are helping to create a network of walking maps that will be published annually. These maps will promote neighborhood assets that support active lifestyles as well as the pleasures and benefits of creating good, safe walking environments where people live and work.

The programs in Portland, Seattle, and elsewhere are just the first step in making physical activity attainable for large numbers of people during their daily routines. Creating communities that are activity-friendly requires zoning that supports mixed-use development, street design that provides bicycle and pedestrian amenities, and funding for transportation projects that support alternative modes of travel. But most of all, these projects require the public investment and advocacy from the people they affect most: you. Be healthy. Be involved. Be active.

To learn more about advocating for activity-friendly communities. . .
Portland, contact Noelle Dobson, program manager for Active Living by Design, at 503-595-2566. Seattle, contact David Levinger, program director for Active Seattle, at 206-652-2310. Or visit Active Living by Design’s website: www.activelivingbydesign.org.