Canada tries to connect city planning to public health

Posted by Philip Langdon on 28 Nov 2011

Source:

The Globe and Mail

Full Story:

For healthy people, build a healthy city

With "mounting research showing that cities where people walk more and drive less are healthier cities, the automobile is losing out to the pedestrian as the main focus of city-building," Canada's Globe and Mail reports.

Twenty-five percent of Canadian adults are obese, and it costs the country $12 billion a year to treat the chronic diseases connected with obesity, according to the newspaper. Meanwhile, it's becoming known that "a walkable neighbourhood with shops and grocers near homes slashes the probability of obesity by 35 percent."

Facts like those are beginning to sink in, says The Globe and Mail. Dr. Trevor Hancock, professor at the School of Public Health and Social Policy at the University of Victoria, sees "a paradigm shift in the way urban planners and municipal leaders see the world." An awareness of how the design of communities affects public health is going to give a new direction to urban planning and policy-making, Hancock believes.

“These kind of seismic changes in our understanding take a long time to work into the system,” Hancock told The Globe and Mail. “It takes a generation for the old guard to die or retire, and a new way of thinking to take its place.”

To make healthier communities, Hancock said, better coordination among different levels of government is going to be necessary. Even in Canada, where planning is often more far-sighted than it is in the US, "Higher levels of government administer health-care dollars but have little say on what cities do with their road-building budgets," Hancock points out.

walking to the grocery store

Submitted by mike bacon (not verified) on Wed, 2011-11-30 19:01.

I grew up in a very user friendly neighborhood with grocery store not more than 700 feet away, and a neighborhood shopping center not more than 1200 feet away. As a kid I was asked to go the store many-a-time. I recalled even at that time, that adult neighbors did not walk to the store. They drove. Hmmmm.

I would be interested in seeing more research on the topic of obesity and shopes and grocers near homes.

As planners we can talk about this all we wish, but the bottom line is that this a humongous social and political question with planners potentially labeled (again)as social engineers.

Quote in an article

Submitted by Robert Sloane (not verified) on Thu, 2011-12-01 12:03.

Hi,

Just noticed your citation of a comment in your article "Canada tries to connect city planning to public health" from the Globe & Mail regarding health: Twenty-five percent of Canadian adults are obese, and it costs the country $12 billion a year to treat the chronic diseases connected with obesity, according to the newspaper. Meanwhile, it's becoming known that "a walkable neighbourhood with shops and grocers near homes slashes the probability of obesity by 35 percent."

We are interested because we are looking for exactly this kind of information for our "Good Walking is Good Business" campaign, and we continue to do research on health benefits of walking.

Can you tell me where this quote originally appeared, or perhaps give me a contact who can reach the source?

Thanks very much

Bob Sloane

Source of quote

Submitted by Robert Steuteville on Fri, 2011-12-02 10:07.

Robert,

That figure came from the Globe & Mail article that we linked to. Here are the rest of the figures:

By the numbers

25 per cent of Canadian adults are obese
This costs Canada $12-billion annually, to treat chronic diseases connected with obesity
It costs the health care system $1,500 more, each year, to treat obese Americans compared with people of normal weight
75 per cent of factors that influence health occur outside the health care system
Each grocery store within 1-kilometre of a person’s home reduces the likelihood of being overweight by 11 per cent
Transit users are 3 times more likely to meet daily minimum of recommended physical activity
A walkable neighbourhood with shops and grocers near homes slashes the probability of obesity by 35 per cent
Improving a neighbourhood’s “walkability” by just 5 per cent gets people 32.1 per cent more active in their travel
A typical white male who lives near shops weighs 10 pounds less than the same man in a suburb of cul-de-sacs
Young teenagers are 2.5 times more likely to walk if there is a recreation destination within 1-kilometre of their home
Women are about 20 per cent less likely to be obese, or suffer from diabetes, if they live in a nice neighbourhood with services compared with a poor neighbourhood

For more on this trend, you might want to get the December issue of New Urban News, which has more such facts.

Self-selection

Submitted by Matthew Hardy (not verified) on Mon, 2011-12-05 07:35.

Interesting article. However, I've recently seen some research arguing, or at least questioning, that suggests that slimmer more active people might be seeking out walkable neighbourhoods. This means that there are both direct and indirect reasons why researchers find people in walkable neighbourhoods aren't so bulky. More research is needed.

Re: self-selection

Submitted by Robert Steuteville on Mon, 2011-12-05 11:44.

Of course, slimmer people might also be self-selecting more healthy food — it logically follows that they must be. But would anybody argue that a more healthy diet doesn't also make people slimmer? If so, what's the big deal of self-selection of walkable neighborhoods? It's just part of a healthy lifestyle for many people.