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Active Living: Moderate levels of walking, bicycling and other exercise in the course of daily life. Active Community Environment: Places where everyone can enjoy active living. The U.S. Surgeon General issued a report that confirms what most of us already know: Americans aren't getting enough exercise. * The American Heart Association has listed physical inactivity as the fourth major risk factor associated with chronic disease. * us. Dept. of Health and Human Services, Physical Activity and Health: A Report of the Surgeon General (Washington, DC, 1996) ruE NAllONJll CElmB fOll BlCYCUNG & WI\lJ{lNG ----"-~- BUILDING mONGER COMMUNmES www.bikewalk.org 8120 Woodmont Ave., Ste. 650 Bethesda, MD 20814 "Regular walking and cycling are the only realistic way that the population as a whole can get the daily half hour of moderate exercise which is the minimum level needed to keep reasonably fit. "1 "Automobile trips that can be safely replaced by walking or bicycling offer the first target for increased physical activity in communities. "2 In healthy communities ~ not just in the movies ~walking (and bicycling) are a n01111a! part of daily life. The Centers for Disease Control and prevention (CDe) call these kinds of places Active Community Environments (ACEs). These communities recognize that providing for active living through community design is a health issue. Poor community design affects the health of the entire community. The increased awareness each of us brings to the problem is another step towards the solution. Creating places for people to walk means more than just special trails, though those might certainly be an important element of an overall plan. Creat- ing an active C0111lTIUnity environ- ment means taking a look at the broader scope of where there are ~ and aren't ~ opportunities to safely walk. It involves land use design, retrofitting the transporta- tion infrastructure, funding, and much more. 1. Physical AcUvity Task Force, More People, More Active, More Often, London: UI< Department of Health, 1995, cited in Judith Hanna, "Transport and Health: Fit to Get About," Urban Transport International, 4 (March/April1996). 2. Jeffrey P. Kaplan and William H. Dietz, "Caloric Imbalance and Public Health Policy; Tile Journal of the American Medical Association, 282 (16): 1579-1581 (1999).