With a little help from your friends

The challenge of changing the culture around physical activity in our daily lives is enveloped within a twist of the "tragedy of the commons": while we may all benefit individually from incorporating more activity in our daily lives, setting up the environment where the right choices are rewarded is far too expensive for any one company, governmental agency, or organization to undertake because they won't see an individual benefit equal to their investment.

Not to oversimplify it, but that seems to be a primary issue that explains the overwhelming inertia we have regarding implementing an environment that supports active living. Those companies that profit from selling goods and services to active individuals (think retailers selling sporting goods, sporting apparel, fresh food, recreational items, etc.) already do so. But there hasn't been an equivalent industry emerging to profit from active environments that are inclusive of the public domain. And there yet has not risen the political will for the public realm to be re-engineered to accommodate active lives.

So, what are you going to do until the baby boomers have to give up the car keys and demand change? One alternative is to get good friends; friends who are already active. There is recent research (highlighted in a recent newspaper article) that delineates how social networks influence behavior. For instance, if you have a friend who became obese, your chances of becoming obese increased 57 percent.

I don't know if there the converse is true- that slim friends make us slimmer- but it seems that we are inexorably linked to our friends and we should get a little help from our friends and go out and walk, ride, dance, whatever- together.

Staying Lapless

It appears that even the act of sitting down for longer periods of time increases the risk of an earlier death. A recent study queried the cause of about 11,000 deaths and isolated time spent sitting- less than 3 hours or more than six hours- and came up with the result that sitting was associated with mortality.

The study abstract concludes: "The time spent sitting was independently associated with total mortality, regardless of physical activity level. Public health messages should include both being physically active and reducing time spent sitting."

The study seems to come to an obvious conclusion- that a sedentary lifestyle is not conducive to a long life- but the startling thing for me is that the impact of sitting for long periods during the day is not erased by physical activity during the rest of the day.

Stimulating environments lengthen lives

Much as I am a booster of the urban life and form, I must admit that I'm rather shocked that an exciting environment, such as can be found in a city, has far-reaching health consequences. Scientists have recently discovered in laboratory mice, when injected with cancerous cells, have a marked difference in response based on their environments. The mice that were raised in a "a complex environment providing social interactions, opportunities to learn and increased physical activity" had tumors almost 80 percent smaller than mice who did not have an enriched environment. Moreover, the interesting environment had a more significant impact on tumor growth than simply a greater amount of exercise.

His shoes were made for walking

This is an interesting article by a man who recently finished his seven year goal of walking all 2,612 streets of San Francisco. He admits that he missed some, such as the streets of Alcatraz and platted streets covered by the Bay, and that he found that he didn't know his town as well as he thought he did. He quotes T.S. Eliot to good effect:

"We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."

Hobbling Joe the Camel

Fortunately, Joe the Camel is no longer with us to promote underage smoking, but Big Tobacco has had other avenues to encourage the use of their product. As of today, however, tobacco companies can no longer sponsor cultural and sporting events and cigarette vending machines can only be located in areas where access is restricted to adults. These changes, plus many more, are a result of the Tobacco Control Act passed by Congress last year.

The horror of congestion

If only our rush hour looked like this:

At the dark end of the street

A recent article in the Harvard Business Review has revived interest in Dr. Lawrence Frank's work. Frank is a University of British Columbia professor who documents how the physical environment impacts level of physical activity. He notes that residents of walkable neighborhoods are 2 and a 1/2 times more likely to be physical active than people who don't live in walkable neighborhoods. And street connectivity really matters: residents in who live in a highly connected street grid drive 26% fewer vehicle miles than residents who live in areas with many cul-de-sacs. The end result is that if you drive more you have a greater chance of gaining weight: Frank reports that for each 1/2 hour of driving per day is associated with a 3% greater chance of being overweight.

Frank summarizes the urban elements that are the most influential for increased physical activity in a neighborhood:
• presence of a continuous sidewalk system;
• presence of dedicated bicycle facilities;
• building setbacks;
• the design, supply, and location of parking;
• ability to cross streets;
• buffering from vehicular traffic;
• size of block faces;
• lighting;
• presence of other pedestrians;
• “eyes on the street”;
• presence of public spaces;
• levels of employment density;
• levels of residential density;
• levels of land use mix; and
• overall continuity of the street network

The ability to arrive at a destination is also an important consideration to promote more walking. In a well connected street network, there is greater choice and a higher possibility that a spectrum of destinations are available for the walking trip, as seen in the following graphic which shows possible one kilometer trips from the red dot in the center of the map.

Going big time

Stories like these that sensationalize the expansion of the American waistline are all too frequent. I wonder what will be the big shocker that causes a reversal in this trend. The alarm bells are clanging but the people who most need to pay heed to the emergency are not listening. We need make the healthy choice an easy choice. Listen up city planners, politicians, DOTs, school districts, Big Food: You better get your act in gear or the military is going to make you.

Transit certainty

Transit plays a significant role in active living since every transit trip involves some sort of walk trip. Transit use, however, is often seen or experienced as inconvenient, and often there's a clear basis for that observation. One way to make transit use more attractive is to remove the uncertainty about when the bus or train will arrive. The wait often feels much longer than it actually is.

Enter the increasingly ubiquitous smart phone. Transit operators have begun to release the raw transit vehicle location data and programmers have created apps, so transit riders can have the information sent to their smartphones. Three cheers for Transit 2.0!

Walking to School Uphill- both ways

The Safe Routes to School (SRTS) program increases student's physical activity through encouraging them to walk or bike to school. A short promotional film produced by Blue Cross Blue Shield shows how one family and one suburban school has incorporated this into their daily regime. the video shows the success of the program, as well as it limitations, in a setting where sidewalk access and single use low-density residential zones restricts safe access by walking and biking. The SRTS program is a good start for many communities to make families aware that there is a choice to walk or bike, but physical layout of some neighborhoods is a challenge. With a large residential lots, multi-acre school campuses, scarcity of sidewalks, and few other walkers, it is a challenge akin to walking to school uphill- both ways.

On the other hand, another local effort which was the recipient of a recent grant- one of twenty awarded nationwide- is set within a walkable neighborhood where the layout encourages students to walk. The walking school bus, conceived of by David Engwicht, promotes student mobility and independence in a sociable way.

The future is ninety years ago

Winston Churchill once said that “We shape our buildings and they shape us.” The same is true for our built environment. But we have become misshaped in our built environment which does not promote daily physical exercise and healthy behavior. As a result we are seeing an epidemic of obesity and an increased incidence of chronic diseases that could be prevented, or their severity decreased, if there were more opportunities and encouragement for physical activity.

Whether it is implementing Complete Streets, Active Living, Safe Routes to School, or the full spectrum of recreational programs, the effort to encourage people toward more exercise is more than an effort to force people to sweat. It is part of the inevitable 21st Century transformation in the way we conduct the business of living. How we transport ourselves and our goods, and how we respond to impacts on our environment from our fossil fuel-based lifestyle frames the fundamental political and governmental policy questions of the coming decades. Although there are many means to address these pressing issues, this much we know to be true: By becoming more active, and by retrofitting our public thoroughfares and making changes in land use patterns, we can begin to address the public health and environmental impacts of our current way of living. Our next fifty years will be about unraveling the mistakes in urban planning from the last fifty years.

What if we build it and they don’t come? For residents in our communities to be engaged in the level of physical activity that would have significant public health and environmental impacts, it would be a seismic cultural shift. Studies in cultural change inform us that many factors combine to induce these sorts of changes, and it is very difficult to know in advance what actually causes change. But we do know that it takes a critical mass of people to spark change. And once it is seen that “everybody’s doing it,” then in fact, everybody does it. Major cultural changes we have seen in recent years, such as the decrease in public acceptance of smoking, have only occurred after a tipping point occurred where continuing to engage in those behaviors was less socially acceptable. The goal is to build a biking and walking infrastructure that mimics the best parts of our transportation infrastructure and minimizes the worst to make it convenient, “normal” and fun for people to use.

In the end, designing places that accommodate all ages and modes of travel is a back to the future endeavor. Living in ways that promote physical activity in our everyday life, similar to how our grandparents lived, will be a giant step to achieving sustainability in our energy use and enhancing our public health. In the end, only by going back to the future will we even have a future.

This is not your parent's DOT

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood continues to advocate for non-motorized transportation modes. A recent policy statement announces the sea change in priorities to recognize and incorporate transportation alternatives in planning and funding. It is now official DOT policy to consider "walking and biking as equals with other transportation modes."

This statement comes after he made an impromptu table top speech to National Bike Summit attendees that caused quite a stir among the faithful.

From the annals of "Don't Try This at Home"

Ah... the virtues of active living.

AL & AC

It was at the bike rack in front of a Whole Foods in New Orleans in the early '90s when I met Alex Chilton. I was locking up and he unlocking his bike when we exchanged simple words and an introduction. He lived in the neighborhood and was "making groceries"- as they say there, which is an adaptation from the French "fais marcher." That was right around the time he was actively unraveling his myth with the release of "Clichés".

That's all. A sliver of a memory and now he's gone.

Kudos to local bike organization

Congrats to the Bicycle Alliance of Minnesota (BikeMN) for the $15,000 Recreational Equipment Inc./Bicycle Friendly Community (REI/BFC) grant they were awarded at the National Bike Summit in Washington D.C. last week. BikeMN's proposal stated that they "will help boost BFC-related program efforts in Minneapolis—currently a Silver BFC—and communities surrounding it, helping to make the Twin Cities Metro Area better for bicycling through complementary planning, infrastructure improvements, and promotion efforts." Heckuva job!

A cycle path of one's own

The promotion of bicycling has often focused on the commuter or the recreational rider or the safety of the young and occasional riders. Through all this advocacy, the disparity in inclination to ride based on gender is rarely noticed. On the other hand, Alan Hoffman, a transit consultant, identifies successful transit systems by the frequency of women riders. He considers women the indicator species on whether transit operators and designers have constructed and maintain a system that is safe and convenient.

A Fall 2009 Scientific American article sums up some of the challenges bike advocates face when they addresses issues of increasing bike ridership in the U.S. Some researchers believe a key element, as it is with transit systems, is making it comfortable, safe and convenient for women. An illuminating viewpoint in that article comes from John Pucher at Rutgers who states that when cities construct bike trails "...they are almost always along rivers and parks rather than along routes leading “to the supermarket, the school, the day care center...” (where presumably women would be more apt to use them.)

The appearance of cycle paths, such as in New York City, Portland, OR and Cambridge, MA, that provide physically separated bicycle ways on city streets, is a welcome shift that may make biking more attractive to women riders.

The velocity of place

As most places in the US are not built to support active lifestyles for all ages, communities that choose the benefits of active living must intentionally retrofit their infrastructure and implement the appropriate programs. Although a community's decision to promote active living is often in the political arena, it is only effective when it is a collaboration of many community actors and has strong backing in broad segments of the community and departments of government. It really does represent, I believe, a conscious community choice to launch into a new realm. It's as if a community is gaining velocity to jump to a higher collective energy level. This has obvious ramifications in community health and regional competitiveness.

Richard Florida writes: "The economy is different now. It no longer revolves around simply making and moving things. Instead, it depends on generating and transporting ideas. The places that thrive today are those with the highest velocity of ideas, the highest density of talented and creative people, the highest rate of metabolism. Velocity and density are not words that many people use when describing the suburbs. The economy is driven by key urban areas; a different geography is required."

It is clear that the different geography required is one in which we can actively participate in; spaces that makes us feel alive and allow us to creatively engage in moving, playing, thinking, socializing and many more "ing"s than I can post here. Each community that chooses to support active living suddenly jumps ahead of its peers in the civic sweepstakes to attract new residents, businesses, investment, etc. and reaches that higher level of metabolism.

I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride it now

By definition, a pop song is one that can be sung joyously while riding a bicycle.

The picture says it all

If you were trying to convince somebody to walk or bike more, and could speak in hyper-linked boxes, your conversation might look something like this.

Treadmill Fun

Warning: This is not safe for a giggle-free work place. We don't recommend trying this at home...

Inspired Bicycles

This video clip doesn't inspire me to ride my bike in a similar fashion. I'm simply slackjawed at Danny MacAskill's skills.

Your Cadillac ain't hipper than my bus stop

It is a truism that every transit trip begins and ends with a walking trip. The catchment area of a single transit stop is generally considered to be a 1/4 mile radius around the station, though light rail stations may attract riders up to a 1/2 mile distant, which is about a ten-minute walk. (That's on the origin- primarily residential- part of the trip. The destination- or employment- part of the trip usually involves less walking because of the density of employment centers that transit routes usually serve.) So daily transit riders are walkers.

That said, I'm excited about the bus rapid transit stop that is popping up about a mile from my house at the intersection of 46th St. and I-35W in South Minneapolis. It's a rather sleek affair, equipped with bike racks naturally.

Handmade Bike Show in Richmond VA

The North American Handmade Bike Show was last weekend and it brought exhibitors from all across the US. The bikes were beautiful and appear to have been a low-scale production high-artisan craft efforts. The bamboo bikes got my attention.

Coke adds Active Living

Yesterday, I was surprised to see a Coca Cola can emblazoned with "Active Living Sponsor". Immediately I was excited that anything with AL on it was receiving that much exposure. But I was also suspicious. Is the corporation simply promoting active lifestyles to promote some good will and forestall efforts by legislatures across the country from passing added taxes on sodas?

The Coke website mentions several initiatives they're involved in, but they don't mention amount of financial support beyond $2.5 million to U.S. national parks over 5 years, a paltry sum for a company that earns about $6 billion per year. I wish the company would contribute substantial sums if they were promoting themselves as sponsors. But it's just a reality that cash-starved AL programs are willing to accept any amount of assistance and Coke is filling a void. And it is a more productive response than alarmist rhetoric.

Dance Me to the End of Life

The arts can be an inspiring way to promote movement and improve the quality of life for aging individuals. Dance, especially, has benefits beyond the simple joy of moving. With changing demographics that indicate that in many areas the population of residents over the age of 65 will double in size, all forms of exercise will result in beneficial outcomes.

The Kairos Dance Theater shows us how it's done:

Dancing Heart - The Power to Nurture and Heal from Kairos Dance on Vimeo.