Ok. I'm a dork. I love watching videos like this one, "What a Transportation Engineer Calls "Walkable". I love understanding how cities function, how they are put together and what needs to be changed so we have great public spaces and healthy communities. Right now, much of America is poorly designed and this arrangement is drastically effecting our health in a negative way.
Today many people don't walk places. Our kids don't walk to school, we often drive to see friends, drive to work, drive to the movies or go shopping, drive to the grocery store or the library. Streets aren't designed for people to walk on and amentities are scattered around the city, not close to home. All this driving is making us unhealthy and overweight.
Here in Colorado, we lost our blue status of healthy living and now are in the red. 1 in 5 Coloradeans are overweight and we are the healthiest state in the nation. When I heard Diane Sawyer on the news last night, saying we now have a nation in which they are recommending 9-12 year olds for cholestral screening, it makes good urban walkable planning all the more urgent.
But in order for this to occur in much of the nation, everyday citizens, like myself, need to have a simple understanding of urban design. Once we understand a little of urban planning, we can advocate for detached sidewalks, narrower streets and other streetscape elements that make our communities safer, healthier and just plan better to live in.
Here's a great easy explanation on how our transportation enigneers are designing streets and why they're just not working.
