April 2014 - Parks & Recreation - 70

Operations
Body Building
Backed by hard data, public health advocates are rethinking the design of parks,
buildings and cities to encourage exercise and wellness
By Kevan Williams

A

School, which grew out of research
into decreasing fatalities for children
walking to school in the 1970s, can
also have important public health
benefits, such as a reduction in childhood obesity, reduced risk of diabetes, and improved bone and muscle
health. As more science comes out
linking public health to the design
of communities, new initiatives are
underway to improve public health
through better design.

ccess to green space is the most important factor when it comes to getting youth to exercise in parks, far more effective than the inclusion of
playgrounds and sports facilities. That's according to a new report by a
group of landscape architecture professors in Norway, published in the journal
Landscape Research, based on their search for the most effective ways to encourage physical activity through park design. The report, entitled Promoting Youth's
Physical Activity through Park Design: Linking Theory and Practice in a Public Health
Perspective, reviewed 32 studies of the physical benefits to kids of park use. The
researchers found that the nearer one lives to green space, the more of it there
is nearby and the easier it is to get to, the more it will get used.
many parts of the country, it's an important reminder.
There are a growing number of policy initiatives out there encouraging
just these sorts of simple design interventions. Efforts like Safe Routes to

Taggart Cojan Sorensen

It turns out that when it comes
to encouraging physical activity in
parks, it's the simple things that matter. Those findings may seem obvious, but in an era where driving rules
and walking is all but impossible in

In this outdoor area at a Bronx school, architect Katie Winter included surface
patterns, poles, rocks and hills to encourage kids to jump, swing and climb.
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Parks & Recreation

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Making Exercise the Easy Choice
" The biggest public health issue in
the city was smoking. After that, the
next biggest issue was obesity, " says
David Burney, chair of the board
of directors of the Center for Active Design, a New York City-based
organization promoting design and
architecture that encourages physical
activity. He's explaining how, after
successfully rolling out smoking bans
across the city, public health officials
in New York set their sights on public
health enemy no. 2: bad design.
" [Epidemiologists] were saying,
'You planners and architects, you're
part of the problem. You've created
this lifestyle where we don't move,' "
Burney says. Officials from agencies
across the city - including planning,
health, transportation, and parks and
recreation - collaborated with architects and academics to produce a
document called Active Design Guidelines. The report outlines a number of
strategies that architects, landscape
architects and planners can imple-
April 2014 - Parks & Recreation

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