COMMUNITY ACTIVITY ENVIRONMENT
ENACT STRATEGY: Active Play & Recreation
Maintain and develop programming and facilities for active play and recreation.
Children and adults alike benefit from programs and facilities that promote active play and recreation. Open green space, neighborhood parks, and specific recreation facilities (e.g. playgrounds, public pools, and sports fields) are all places where people can engage in physical activity—including walking groups, bicycle rides, and organized sporting events. In fact, there is strong evidence that people who live near parks, playgrounds and other such facilities exercise more regularly. Unfortunately, however, not all communities have equal access to these healthy environments: low-income communities and communities of color are less likely to have safe, well-maintained facilities and high-quality programming. Luckily, local advocates can do a lot to change this unfair situation and ensure that residents have places to play.
Characteristics of communities programmed for active play and recreation:
Communities can advocate for and support efforts to:
- Create new facilities (e.g. parks, pools, tracks, etc.)
- Maintain and improve facilities, to address safety and aesthetic issues
- Extend the hours of publicly owned facilities (nights/weekends)
- Implement sliding scale fees for public and private programs/facilities
- Fund programs that offer exercise classes and organize sports teams
- Partner with school districts to share recreational facilities on school grounds
Lockwood Elementary School Playground
Located in one of the most park deficient areas of Oakland, California, Lockwood Elementary School also suffered from extreme overcrowding. After significant renovations to an asphalt yard, more than 900 students, aged 5 through 11, had a safe, stimulating playground to enjoy.
South Bronx Active Living Campaign: New York, NY
The South Bronx Active Living Campaign envisions the South Bronx Greenway as a lively "third place" in the Hunts Point neighborhood — not home and not work — where people meet and interact, and where physical activity is natural and fun. The Campaign is actively working to create a four-mile-long waterfront esplanade, which will include a series of parks, traffic calming features and enhanced streetscapes along routes to the greenway
The Upper Valley Trails for Life Partnership: NH & VT
The Upper Valley Trails for Life partnership seeks to improve community health and quality of life in the Upper Valley region of Vermont and New Hampshire by increasing physical activity through year-round use of trails and other walking and biking routes. This project, which includes the nation’s longest ice-skating trail, is a model for addressing the challenges facing rural communities interested in promoting active living, especially those with long, cold winters.
KaBOOOM! is a national non-profit that empowers communities to build playgrounds and other recreational facilities for children, youth, and families. Over the years, KaBOOM! has contributed to the building of 1000s of new play spaces in neighborhoods across the country.
Smart Growth at the Frontier: Strategies and Resources for Rural Communities
This resource includes detailed case studies of rural communities that have used innovative approaches to protecting and expanding open space and parkland.
The KaBOOM! website includes step-by-step guidance for building or improving a playground in your community. One of the many resources is a comprehensive online toolkit.
Park Equity & Public Health Toolkit
Developed by Trust for Public Land, this toolkit is designed to assist those interested in creating, improving, and funding public parks and playgrounds. From here, California residents can also link to ParkScore, a website that maps interactive park and health-related information to help advocates make the case for increasing park and open space investments in their communities.
Joint Use refers to shared community use of public facilities: some school districts, for example, allow children and families to play on their playgrounds and in their gyms before and after hours, as well as on the weekends. This interactive website is dedicated to helping create safe places for children in all communities to play and be active—by providing the tools and resources advocates need in order to launch successful joint use agreements in their communities.
Peaceful Playgrounds
This practical toolkit suggests ways to create safe playgrounds that encourage active play.
The National Program for Playground Safety
Funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Program for Playground Safety works to prevent and reduce playground injuries. The playground safety report card is one tool that adults can use to assess whether or not a playground is safe for children’s use.
Community Schools and Recreation: Pitt County, NC
This joint use policy makes physical activity facilities available to all residents by opening schools to the public during after-school hours. In addition, it calls for an increase in the number of high-quality recreation programs for all age groups—from pre-school to senior citizens.
Interim Land Use Policy: Escondido, CA
This City Council policy allows public use of private vacant lots for neighborhood purposes including: community gardens, recreational space, or temporary public art displays.
Open Spaces Sub-District: Boston, MA
The City Council approved this measure, which creates land use regulations that protect and conserve areas used for community gardens, parklands, and other recreational spaces.
Parks and Recreational Sidewalks Utility Tax Fund
This ordinance increased the utility tax by 3% for the purpose of acquiring, establishing and improving parks, playgrounds, open space, and sidewalks to promote active recreation and safe walking.
Clean and Safe Neighborhood Park Bond: San Francisco, CA
This creates a $185 million bond for the improvement of park and recreational facilities in San Francisco.
in the ENACT Local Policy Database
Active Living By Design creates community-led change by working with local and national partners to build a culture of active living and healthy eating. Its vision is healthy communities, where routine physical activity and healthy eating are accessible, easy and affordable to everyone.
National Park Service: Rivers, Trails, and Conservation Assistance Program
The Rivers, Trails, and Conservation Assistance Program (RCTA) is the community assistance arm of the National Park Service. RTCA staff provide technical assistance to communities so they can conserve rivers, preserve open space, and develop trails and greenways.
Project for Public Space: Parks
Since 1975, Project for Public Spaces (PPS) has worked in more than 2,000 communities in 26 countries around the world, helping people turn their public spaces into vital community places, with programs, uses, and people-friendly settings that build local value and serve community needs. PPS has a parks-focused initiative, which is working with communities to transform underperforming parks into great public destinations that are lively, secure, and distinct in character.
The Parks for the People project "works with community leaders across the nation to secure funding, acquire parklands, and ensure that parks match the character and needs of the community."
The Trust for Public Land (TPL) is a national, nonprofit, land conservation organization that conserves land for people to enjoy as parks, community gardens, historic sites, rural lands, and other natural places, ensuring livable communities for generations to come. Through its Parks for People initiative, TPL works in cities and suburbs across America to ensure that everyone—in particular, every child—enjoys close-to-home access to a park, playground, or natural area.
The Trust for Public Land Reports
The Trust for Public land has authored two major reports on parks and their benefits.
This report outlines how desperate the need is for city parks—especially in low-income neighborhoods—and describes the economic, environmental, health and social benefits that parks bring to a city and its people.
This report outlines the physical, psychological, and social health benefits that communities and residents derive from nearby parks.
Promoting Physical Activity in Rural Communities (PDF)
This cross-sectional study examines accessibility of walking trails and their relationship to physical activity. Its findings suggest that construction of walking trails may be a viable intervention strategy for promoting physical activity in rural communities.
Brownson, RC, Housemann, RA, Brown, DR, Jackson-Thompson, J, King, AC, Malone, BR, and Sallis, JF. (2000) Promoting Physical Activity in Rural Communities: Walking Trail Access, Use, and Effects. Am J Prev Med 18(3):235–241.
More Green Space Related to Reducing Health Inequity (PDF)
A recent study by researchers at the University of Glasgow has found that greater exposure to green spaces is associated with fewer income-related health disparities. The health gap between the rich and the poor was twice as high in areas with fewer parks, forests and playing fields. According to the authors, physical environments that promote good health may be important in reducing socioeconomic health inequalities.
Mitchell, R. and Popham, F. (2008) Effect of exposure to natural environment on health inequalities: an observational population study.The Lancet 372(9650):1655-1660.
Neighborhood Parks Associated With More Physical Activity In Adolescent Girls**
The RAND corporation study found that people living in close proximity to outdoor parks are more likely to use these facilities for physical activity than those who do not live near outdoor recreation areas. Parks that feature structured activities, such as sporting events or walking groups, attract more users than other parks. The RAND Health study is the first systematic evaluation ever done of public parks and was conducted as part of a larger project examining the impact that neighborhoods have on health. Read the RAND press release (PDF).
Cohen et al. Park Use and Physical Activity in a Sample of Public Parks in the City of Los Angeles. RAND Technical Report, February 2006.
Kids take walks, if parks, stores nearby (PDF)
This study looked at data collected from a large analysis of land use and travel patterns (SMARTRAQ) in the metropolitan Atlanta area. It found that young people are more likely to walk if they live within a half mile of a park or store.
Frank, L., Kerr, J., Chapman, J. and Sallis, J. Urban Form Relationships with Walk Trip Frequency and Distance Among Youth. American Journal of Health Promotion. 2007 March/April; 21 (14), Supplement: 305.
Physical Activity Among Adolescents: When Do Parks Matter?
This finds that the relationship between physical activity and access to parks differs depending on adolescents’ socio-demographic, housing, and neighborhood characteristics, and that parks may be particularly important for promoting physical activity among urban adolescents.
Promoting Physical Activity in Rural Communities (PDF)
This cross-sectional study examines accessibility of walking trails and their relationship to physical activity. Its findings suggest that construction of walking trails may be a viable intervention strategy for promoting physical activity in rural communities.
Brownson, RC, Housemann, RA, Brown, DR, Jackson-Thompson, J, King, AC, Malone, BR, and Sallis, JF. (2000) Promoting Physical Activity in Rural Communities: Walking Trail Access, Use, and Effects. Am J Prev Med 18(3):235–241
** We can only provide links to the study abstracts and not the full text.
Reference from the Intro
[1] EB Kahn, LT Ramsey, RC Brownson, GW Heath, et al. The Effectiveness of Interventions to Increase Physical Activity A Systematic Review. Available at: http://www.thecommunityguide.org/pa/pa-ajpm-evrev.pdf Accessed August 8, 2008.
