Does the area where you live have plenty of sidewalks, parks, and neighborhood stores where you can walk rather than ride in a car? If not, they should.

So says a university community-health expert, who contends that building more sidewalks and intermingling residential and commercial buildings would mean more people would walk to their locations rather than drive.

"The number of hours we spend in our car everyday detracts from our physical, social and mental health," said Dr. Laura Brennan Ramirez, a researcher at Saint Louis University. "Our dependence on the car is overwhelming."

While Ramirez and other health experts believe that regular moderate physical activity may prevent many diseases and prolong life, more than 45 percent of Americans don't move around enough to stay healthy.

But Ramirez's project into features of communities that influence physical activity builds on a growing body of evidence that links how cities are designed and built with how much exercise residents get. 

Recommendations 

Here are five of her major recommendations:

•  Improve mass transportation so people can walk to train and bus stations;

•  Build more neighborhoods that mix commercial and residential development, with hiking and biking trails and crosswalks; 

•  Improve community aesthetics, because people are more likely to walk if their neighborhoods are clean and offer sights to see;

•  Require more gym classes in schools and more "activity incentives," such as flexible schedules or on-site workout facilities, at companies;

•  Use highway funds to build roadway bike lanes and maintaining parks and other recreational areas.

However, Ramirez said, many U.S. communities are only impediments to older adults and children who would otherwise walk.

"We haven't really designed our communities well for older adults, particularly once they get to the point that they can't drive," she said. "In addition, given concerns about the soaring childhood obesity rates, not having schools located within the neighborhood is a major problem."

Her study, which appears in December's American Journal of Preventive Medicine, was funded by the federal government's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Parks and activity

Meanwhile, in the country's quest to get kids to exercise, having a park right down the road just may be just the trick, at least for girls in your family.

A California think tank said recently that adolescent girls who live within a half-mile of a public park are 10 percent more active than girls who had no parks in their neighborhoods.

Despite not determining whether the girls were active in those parks, the study still shows that environment plays a major role in a person's activity level, said Deborah A. Cohen, a senior scientist with the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, Calif.

"It could be that just having a park in the neighborhood creates a setting where physical activity is normal part of daily life," she said. "The more we see others being active, the more likely we are to have higher expectations about physical activity and to be more physically active ourselves.

"If girls become more active when they live close to a public park, further research may show the same thing happening to others in a neighborhood."

Courts, playgrounds and walking paths

Cohen's study focused on physical activity of nearly 1,600 sixth-grade girls and the average number of public parks within a half-mile radius of where the girls lived in Minneapolis, Minn., Baltimore/Washington, D.C., San Diego, New Orleans, Columbia, S.C., and Tucson, Ariz., 

Minneapolis led the list with 2.2 parks within a half-mile radius, with Tucson pulling up last with 0.34 parks.

Cohen said her findings suggests parks with basketball courts, playgrounds and walking paths are associated with more physical activity than parks with "passive amenities" like picnic areas and lawn games. Girls were less active if the nearby parks had skateboarding facilities, which Cohen attributed to the places being overrun by boys.

Even with the parks nearby, the girls only got on average about 114 minutes a week of intense physical activity outside of school hours, or about 16 minutes a day, far under the 60 daily minutes recommended by the U.S. surgeon general.

"We still have a long way to go in encouraging girls to be active," Cohen said.

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Sources: Saint Louis University, RAND Corporation

Nubella News, a division of Marketing Technology Solutions, Inc., offers content intended for informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. We encourage our readers to seek prompt medical care for health issues and consult their physicians before starting a new diet, fitness regimen, or medical treatment.