Neighborhood
Land Use/General Plan/Zoning
- San Diego County Adopts Childhood Obesity Master Plan
The San Diego County Childhood Obesity Action Plan has been released and is available at the San Diego County Childhood Obesity Campaign website. The overarching goal of the plan is improving the health of children and families in San Diego County. The plan includes strategies to educated families and providers about the importance of nutrition and exercise, as well as, creating an environment / community that supports families to make healthy choices.
www.ourcommunityourkids.org/
- Active Living Research
Active Living Research is a $12.5-million national program of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to support research to identify environmental factors and policies that influence physical activity. Findings from this research are used to help inform policy, design of the built environment and other factors to promote active living. There is much to explore on this website, but the link provided here will take you directly to several briefs on designing for better nutrition, physical activity and to reduce childhood obesity.
www.activelivingresearch.org/index.php/
What_We_are_Learning/117
- Groundswell: Stories of Saving Places, Finding Community
This book, written by Alix Hopkins and published by The Trust for Public Land, celebrates the role of land-use projects as a way to find community. Benefits of these special projects begin to accrue even in the early planning stages when likely—and unlikely—partners come together around a common purpose. Along the way citizens discover untapped leadership abilities in themselves and cultivate enduring friendships with others. Written from a practitioner's perspective, Groundswell shows how community building really works in the hands of citizens and volunteer leaders through real life examples. The book can be obtained for $20 from the following link:
www.chelseagreen.com/2005/items/groundswell
- Safe Routes to Healthy Food Toolkit
The Safe Routes to Healthy Foods toolkit was developed to assist public health professionals and others in visioning, assessing, planning, encouraging and implementing healthy, active communities. The primary purpose of this toolkit is for use as a self-training/learning tool. Most tools provided on the website target those interested in learning more about how our streets, the built environment and the way we build our communities impact public health.
www.odyssey.org/toolkit/
- Land Use and Health
The Public Health Law Program's Land Use and Health project's website contains tools and resources for local governments, private developers, and community groups to work to create patterns of development that improve community health--by ensuring that farmers' markets and neighborhood grocery stores are supported, for instance, or by promoting sidewalks, parks and other environmental components that encourage physical activity.
www.healthyplanning.org/
- The Center for Law in the Public Interest
The Center for Law in the Public Interest supports a collective vision for a comprehensive and coherent web of parks, schools, beaches, forests, and transportation that promotes human health, a better environment, and economic vitality for all, and reflects the cultural diversity of Los Angeles. This portion of the website describes the disparities in LA of access to open space and the opportunity to restore a vision for LA based on three audits by City Controller that document systemic management failures in the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks, and more importantly, provide a blueprint for reform. Maps and other resources are included.
www.clipi.org/ourwork/healthypsc.html
- Creating Safe, Healthy and Active Living Communities
This guide is designed for public health professionals to understand the key elements of land use and transportation planning, including the fundamentals of general planning, zoning, and regional transportation planning. Included are ideas for public health action and intervention in each area to inspire action.
Download: Land Use and Transportation Planning [492k pdf file]
- Sustainable Communities Network
This website has a variety of links and resources for building healthy and sustainable communities. Of special note is the Placemaking: Tools for Community Action, a guide for a community member, city official, planner, or design professional to identify currently available planning tools and to assess their applicability and appropriateness to specific projects or issues, alone or in combination.
www.sustainable.org/
- Zoning and Obesity Project - Center for Law and the Public's Health at Georgetown and Johns Hopkins Universities
Sponsored by CDC's National Center for Environmental Health (www.cdc.gov/nceh/), this project examines how zoning laws can encourage the availability of nutritious food and limit the proliferation of food that can be harmful. Two documents released in October 2005, The City Planner's Guide to the Obesity Epidemic: Zoning and Fast Food and The Use of Zoning to Restrict Fast Food Outlets: A Potential Strategy to Combat Obesity examine the supporting scientific evidence for zoning laws that address fast food outlets and the zoning laws that have been enacted by municipalities. The project seeks to educate planners, public health officials, and others that zoning law has the potential to be an effective tool for addressing obesity as a public health problem.
Download: City Planner's Guide [41k pdf file]
Download: Zoning to Restrict Fast Foods [234k pdf file]
- New Rules Project - Designing Rules as if Communities Matter
The Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) proposes a set of new rules that builds community by supporting humanly scaled politics and economics. The New Rules website offers ideas and examples of land-use planning tools and local laws (including examples from Coronado, California) that have supported more "people friendly" development.
www.newrules.org/index.htm
- Healthy Places
This website, hosted by the Centers for Disease and Prevention, has a wealth of information about issues related to the "built environment", the effect of community design on our ability to safely walk and bicycle for transportation and exercise. The website can be accessed at:
www.cdc.gov/healthyplaces
- Designing Heart Healthy Communities
Behavior is not just a matter of choice. Every aspect of our lifestyles—what we eat, whether we smoke, how much we exercise—is shaped by our surroundings. This Newsweek article examines the role of community design in preventing chronic disease.
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9466932/site/newsweek/
- The Project for Public Space
The Project for Public Space (PPS) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating and sustaining public places that build communities. PPS has an international reputation for its work on the design and management of public spaces and has helped over 1,200 communities in 47 states and 23 countries improve their parks, markets, streets, transit stations, libraries and countless other public spaces. The website is full of resources for social and physical health-minded community planning. They also have a variety of grant opportunities on their website.
www.pps.org/PublicMarkets/
- Does the Built Environment Influence Physical Activity? Examining the Evidence.
This study, published in January 2005 could help clarify whether and to what extent the physical environment where Americans live and work contributes to the fact that more than half of the U.S. adult population falls short of meeting the U.S. surgeon general's guidelines for physical activity, said the committee that wrote the report.
www.iom.edu/report.asp?id=24476
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