Health and Physical Activity

Reference
Local Government Commission. (n.d.) Health and Physical Activity. Retrieved October, 01, 2007, from http://www.lgc.org/community_desing/health.html.


The Local Government Commission, which is a nonprofit organization working to build livable communities, wrote this article. It said that residents, especially those who are under-served, are physically inactive, which might lead to many diseases. Community design should be planned to encourage or improve residents’ health, and this issue was noticed by public health professionals, who have found some evidence about these problems. As a matter of fact, CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) had to wake some changes on land use and transportation patterns, but many cities still need to be improved.
However, LGC and California work together, and they found the most important factors for changing communities are ”economic development and increased sense of community” . Moreover, they give support to create walkable communities.

In these five reading reaction journals, we can find that healthy communities have become valued in recent years. They all found that land use and transportation are poorly developed and they are the reason why residents have less physical activity. In spite of that, government related departments, such as CDC, and some nonprofit institutes have gone deep into the problems and have dug out the key points to improve them. I’m glad to hear the news about public departments having action on this issue, and outreaching on this topic, because political decisions are the ultimate power to make healthy communities successful. Furthermore, this issue has become a worldwide known topic, and people perceive that they have their right to argue with urban planners to make healthy living environments.