About Healthy Places

Reference
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (n.d.). About Healthy Places. Retrieved September 24, 2007, from http://www.cdc.gov/healthyplaces/about.htm.


This article “About Healthy Places” was published on the CDC website, which described the environmental situation in the past and in recent years. In the first part, they gave the definition of healthy environments. Then they mentioned that city development or urban planning in the past has had disadvantages to humans. For instance, there are too many roads or spaces for cars, too far to walk to other destinations, and too few considerations for residents. However, governments have noticed the influences of community design, and they have become committed to making new coalitions and resolutions to relieve public health problems. Finally, they picture the future map in our communities and let people know the healthy environment knowledge.

This article told us how the community environment would be changed and made the idea of healthy environments as simple as citizens can understand well. The main points are easy to realize and be agreed upon. Nevertheless, only few people know this knowledge and they have little power and few resources to change their communities; it looks like a long road. Residents get used to the environment they live in. They might complain about using segregated lands, but they lead the usual life as time passes by without reactions. Therefore, political decision makers, like mayors who have the power to modify the way of urban planning, have the main role in opening the road, and can promote residents’ health as soon as possible.

On The Rise In American Cities

Reference
Wood, D. (2007, May 2). On The Rise In American Cities: The Car-free Zone. The Christian Science Monitor, csmonitor.com. Retrieved September 18, 2007, from http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0502/p01s03-ussc.html?page=1

This article is written by D. Wood, who writes that there are several cities that name suspended or stopped driving spaces and released more spaces for pedestrians, bikers or people who want to have physical activities since three years ago. The most important reasons that more and more cities do that are to make more active environments and promote active people. Although banning cars might cause some traffic problems or economic decreasing, researcheres find the situations will get better but not worse. Furthermore, to change usage spaces seems to cost a lot, but leaders should know that to transform the using purpose of basic infrastructures is simple and inexpensive. There are many small or poor cities that do it well and it has become a trend in the world, especially when global warming and the obesity rate have become serious. People have to treat the go-carless trend as an important strategy to maintain health.

To relieve suitable room sounds great, for non-car users to exercise or get enough entertainment spaces during weekends or leisure time. Overdevelopment of land made our living environment full of cars, roads and bad air. However, non-car users’ leisure spaces are not developed in adaptive proportion. To take the effect of going carless is really a complicated progress; telling the information to people from everywhere, telling them where to find parking lots, and altering the purpose of roads will cause cities to suffer from some traffic troubles directly and some unexpected problems, even if the final results are a benefit to the city and their people. During the interim time, how to reconcile local people’s views and turn their view into supportive roles is vital. The successful experiences in Europe and the US bring the other countries out to change their urban plans, above all the developing ones.

In my opinion, promoting people’s right to have fun in the natural environment, in other words, building an active environment, is more than promoting people’s health, it’s also promoting the world’s.

Walking hard for many exercisers

Reference

Associated Press. (2007, Sep 7). Walking hard for many exercisers. CNN.Com./health. Retrieved September 09, 2007, from
http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/diet.fitness/09/07/walkable.neighborhoods.p/index.htm.

This article described the research in Atlanta, which was done by Lawrence Frank. Frank is the chief of connecting living environment and health. His studies showed that built environment is related to human health. Recently, his research finds that walkable communities make people drive less and have lower obesity rate, no matter whether they are exercisers or not. This means that community sidewalks linking to stores, transportation or other destinations can increase walking opportunities and decrease driving possibilities because it’s easier and more convenient to walk. Although people know that living in walkable communities is healthier, it costs more. This article lays stress on the fact that the communities you live in becomes an important factor in influencing physical activity and health.

I think that most community environments in US are walkable. There are many sidewalks connected and cars would stop in crossroads until pedestrians pass by; however, the land in US is too big to walk by foot. In the light of the situation, residents can take a walk or exercise around their neighborhood but not traveling or shopping. Suburban neighborhoods usually do not have enough daily resources for residents, so they have to drive downtown. On the other hand, people who live in walkable communities can get what they want by public transportation easily without driving. In order to build a walkable community, mixed-use environment appears to be the vital issue.
Although we know that walkable communities are benefits for humans’ health, the results aren’t significant. Providing walkable communities would let people have the equal chances to get health, which is standing on the passive side, but healthy or not depends on your choices, which are on the active side. In other words, people may be healthier in walkable environments than people living in unwalkable environments; nevertheless, it’s not an absolute outcome. You can be healthier in unwalkable environments, if you try to exercise more or understand how to keep healthy.

Models for change: Lessons for creating active living communities

Reference

Cervero, R. (2007, Feb). Models for change: Lessons for creating active living communities. Planning Magazine, ppA1.

As we know, physical inactivity threatens our heath. The strategy to maintain health is what we called “active living”. This article is talking about the tasks to create active living communities, and what is ALR program doing for the topic, especially case studies, which focus on processes of policy changing, and policy innovations. Collaboration between related departments, and to put the thought of public-health into plans in the beginning are most important key points. However, it’s easy to write in words; stakeholders or researchers should understand it’s difficult to realize or to achieve rapidly and to learn the way to work together.

Creating active communities has increased recently to promote physical activity. Through the case studies, we might be able to reveal the policy processes and understanding the problems of this issue, but how to deal with the whole thing and how to collaborate are hard between different departments. Health issues are not a part of designing communities permanently, and stakeholders or staffers in diverse fields haven’t worked together very many times. I agree with the idea to create active communities for all that, it’s hard to overcome. For example, to make a good communication or a deal takes a very long time, and some troubles will happen during that time, which would be the toughest part. In my opinion, except for what this article mentioned, a perfect leader who can have the abilities of integrating and making decisions is the first key point to create active communities.

Http://www.activeliving.org/node/643

by Corina