Building a healthy cities should be a priority for any mayor, especially with new initiatives such as The Partnership for Healthy Cities, led by former NYC Mayor, Michael Bloomberg and the World Health Organization. The initiative will provide 5 million dollars towards public health projects worldwide. So far, forty cities have joined the Partnership, Toronto being one of them. So I'm excited to see how these cities progress over time. The idea of creating healthy, livable cities for all, is not knew, but has slowly come to the forefront of both urban planning and public health sectors. Inspirational leaders like Gil Penalosa, from 8-80 Cities, have been promoting these concepts around the world, and led successful events, such as Open Street Toronto.
The relationship between your health and your city?
A large part of my public health work was focused on the built environment portfolio. My work revolved the growing body of research that indicates the relationship between city planning and walkability. Increased walkability can achieved through the following elements:
Density
Service Proximity
Land Use Mix
Street Connectivity
Road Network and Sidewalk Characteristics
Parking
Aesthetics and Human Scale
All the elements combined, create a safe environment for an active city, that balances the use of vehicles, public spaces, transit and pedestrians. Building cities that promote walking and active lifestyles can help reduce your risk for Non-Communicable Diseases (NCD's) such as diabetes, obesity and hypertension. Being active can help prevent such health conditions, resulting in a decreased number of NCD's that could result in a cost savings to health care systems, and create healthier populations. Walking is the simplest, easiest, healthy habit to adopt. It requires no gym membership, no fancy outfits, and it can be done everywhere! It provides a wide range of benefits, such as improving your emotional, physical and mental health, and allows you to observe and interact with your community in whole new ways.
While I was in Fiji, I relied on public transit and my two feet to get around. I loved walking, I got to soak in the lush green surroundings, spot a cow crossing a street, and made friendships in the neighbourhoods I lived in. Walking around Nadi you realize some parts lacked a continuous side walk, which meant on a daily basis I shared the road with cars, trucks, buses, and stray dogs (some of which I feared would attack). Sometimes I would start on a sidewalk, then it would turn into a dirt path or just a bunch of grass. I didn't really mind, until it rained. Heavy tropical storms meant flooding, which meant walking through muddy puddles or on the road itself. However, if you had a mobility issue, this path wouldn't work for you, which meant you could be left sharing the road with vehicles, or calling a taxi. However, the main town of Nadi, Lautoka and Suva all had connected sidewalks, and were pedestrian friendly.
While I've been in Auckland, I've been learning more about the plans to improve this city to accommodate for the rapid growth of one million people over the next twenty years. Auckland is a beautiful city, but spread out, making it difficult to travel between suburbs on transit. Traffic and congestion has grown over the last few years due to increasingly reliance on vehicles. The downtown core is very pedestrian friendly, with scramble cross walks, vibrant outdoor spaces, and a connected network. Healthy Auckland Together is is the initiative that outlines the plan for the city in order to create a healthier city focused on reducing overweight and obesity. Initiatives are focused on:
Healthy Auckland Together has the support of several government and NGO's and I'm hoping to learn more about the work, and maybe even be involved in some way in the future. The most exciting part about this work, is that it connects with the Auckland Design Manual, which has a theme of promoting health, activity and wellbeing. Auckland Council has even connected with staff from New York City to gain inspiration from their success in using zoning regulations to gain dollars from developers to further fund the public realm and transit improvements. Working with and being inspired by New City staff is exactly what I got to do when I worked on the built environment, see the Healthy Peel by Design Initiatives. To hear more about New York City, check out the interesting presentation I attended earlier this week in Auckland and the Centre for Active Design Guidelines.
