Now its important to understand before you read this that I am a planner. That is not a description of my personality but it is my profession. I am a Professional Land Use planner, which means I am trained in how to physically lay out a community and organize the space that we humans live in. This entails thinking about what makes a good place for people to live and working to achieve that.
Now with this disclaimer, I want to complain about how we organize our cities. I just started a new job in Halifax on Monday, and needed to go for a run today at lunch time. As I commute about an hour to my job, which starts at 7.30 and I knew that I would be tired and hungry when I got home at 6.00 so I needed to run during my lunch hour. I dutifully dressed in my running gear and as I headed out of my new office, people were looking at me strangely. Finally someone asked me if I was going to go for a run. When I said yes, they said that there were no sidewalks and traffic was dangerous and that I needed not to get injured as they did not want to go through the hiring process again.
As a planner, I can honestly say that many places are not designed for anything but car traffic, making it noisy, smelly, dangerous and totally unrelaxing for runners, walkers, bikers etc. Cities and municipalities control the standards that allow new development to occur, development companies build them and we use them. In this day and age of unhealthy living where most of the population does not get enough exercise, we need to plan our communities, our cities, our rural areas and our business parks to encourage activity not to discourage it.
So, I encouage people to participate in the public conversation about good planning. The politicians and the developers will listen, but you need to partipate. We also need to be seen on the streets so that it become apparent that sidewalks and trails need to be constructed, buffers erected to provide a safety barrier between cars and pedestrians, bike lanes built and road sholders property maintained.
Specific actions you can take to support good urban planning:
- read your local paper to see what is going on and think about these issues
- participate in community meetings on planning issues
- when you are thinking about buying a lot in a new development, ask about trails, sidewalks and green spaces.
- Encourage your local politicians to retrofit areas without sidewalks and bike lanes
- Protect yourself when you run in badly planned areas, and run in a group. The more of you that run there, the more the drivers will get used to seeing walkers, runners and bikers on the road.
- Write a letter to your local Council about the links between health and planning.
- Educate yourself. The Heart and Stroke Foundation of Nova Scotia has some great information on the links between planning and health. Follow this link http://www.heartandstroke.ns.ca/site/c.inKMIPNlEiG/b.6021481/k.CF30/Healthy_Living__Shaping_healthy_active_communities_toolkit.htm
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I agree on all points. If it was actually easy to get around on foot or by bike, I really think more people would do it – and you’re right, in order for it to become a priority for municipalities, we have to let them know it’s a priority for us.