National Public Health Week

Healthy Communities For Healthy Kids

Would children walk to school if sidewalks were part of neighborhood planning? How can neighborhoods be designed to keep children safe when they play outside? How can communities bring more fresh food to our nation’s children?

These questions and more will be addressed during National Public Health Week beginning April 3. The theme is Designing Healthy Communities: Raising Healthy Kids and will focus on key elements of community design that can reduce childhood obesity, improve health and keep our kids safe. Numerous events are scheduled around the country including the Kick-Off in Washington DC with guests including Sheila Jackson Lee, Lois Capps and Barack Obama. Click here to find an event near you. Eye-catching posters and web site banners can be downloaded and Kaiser is sponsoring two web casts, the Kick-Off Event and an Ask The Experts panel.

In addition, you can also participate in the daily activist’s schedule to support a variety of legislation.

Links and More:
http://www.lightupthedarkness.org/blog/?p=15#more-15

When I was a kid, we stayed out playing until nightfall and could not be reached for hours (unlike the cell carrying kids now). I remember we did have video games, atari 2600 and a friend had the coleco. It was more fun to get outside than play. We had lots of traffic, both on the streets and in the railyards. All of us rode freight trains, explored abandoned buildings and cut across lots to find the shortest route. We rode our bikes in storm drains, and knew not to when a storm was nearby. Strength in numbers, we protected each other. The worst things to happen were cuts and bruises, which actually toughened you and taught you how to avoid the same thing happening again.

It was more fun than the bubble kids are living in now, with the media screaming BOO every minute, and the resulting erosion of rationally estimating the odds of something bad happening.

One of my daughter's best friend hit and killed the brother of another one of their best friends because our city won't install a light where all the kids cross the highway. Never mind that the intersection leads straight to the middle school and high school, tourists get mad if they have to stop at too many lights in a town, so the state says no. Consequently, kids on this side of the highway don't go to the skate park on the other side of the highway.

We do have a little lot sized "pocket park" though. It is so tacky that I don't think anybody actually takes their kids to it. You certainly wouldn't let them go alone, who knows what kind of tweaker might be there. Same with alot of our bike paths. We lost an old man a few months ago, everybody searched for him. He had fallen down a ravine and a teen-ager found him several days later. Thank god, but we all know the kid was there smoking pot because that's where they go to do that.

And this is a town of 7,000.

Yes, you do need experts to create cities and public areas that encourage community interaction. Sometimes it's putting a fence up, sometimes it's taking one down. How a path is laid out can encourage people to use it, or avoid it. A terrible shame to spend thousands of dollars on something that people find unfriendly.

Times have changed.

Our town has about 20,000 people.

There is no park, no bike path, no recreation center. There is no place for people to gather and play, take a walk, have a picnic or just enjoy themselves. There's not even a mall where one might go to do any of the above, albeit with the cacophony of stores and crowds to deal with (unless you drive to the neighboring town).

We do, however, have an adult video and toy store.

because people actually use them. I live in an inner city 'hood and there are people talking walks all the time. It's a great way to get to know neighbors, to smile and wave when they're out doing lawn work and you pass by.

New neighborhoods in this town are moonscapes of two car garage doors facing the streets, no yards, and the houses hidden behind the massive garage, no sidewalks, no porches, no possibility for community. I can't imagine why they were designed this way.

I just can't imagine living in one.

people go for walks in my neighborhood all the time. We don't have much traffic though, so we all just walk down the street. Most of the homes were built in the 60's. We do have some of those neighborhoods you described, you're right, I never see people going for walks in them. They are very cold and unfriendly, don't know what it is about them exactly, but they are.