Rob Stein, Washington Post
July 17, 2004 WALK0717
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Just outside Washington, on the grounds of an old farm, a new community is taking shape that researchers think is the kind of place that might help solve the nation's growing obesity crisis.
At the King Farm development in Rockville, Md., homes are being built, streets are being paved, sidewalks are being laid and office buildings, restaurants and stores are being located in ways that experts say should do one seemingly simple but crucial thing: get people to walk more.
A handful of similar communities slowly have been sprouting up throughout the nation in the first tentative attempts to counter the sprawl of strip malls, cul-de-sacs and subdivisions without sidewalks that force people to drive everywhere. All that driving rather than walking -- along with junk food and super-sizing -- is believed to be a major reason why Americans are getting so fat.
So far, many of the "walkable" attributes of new neighborhoods such as King Farm have been unanticipated consequences of decisions that developers made largely to satisfy housing density requirements or to make their projects more marketable. But the nation's obesity crisis has spurred a new movement to purposefully build communities and retrofit existing ones to make it more natural for people to be physically active.
"We're trying to develop an environment that's health-promoting so we can avoid dealing with treating all the illnesses that result from obesity down the line," said Allen Dearry of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences at the National Institutes of Heath, who organized a recent conference in Washington to spur more such efforts.
Medical researchers, government officials, sociologists, exercise scientists, nutritionists, city planners, architects, transportation experts, developers and even police have been forming unusual collaborations around the country to foster new living and work environments such as King Farm.
The effort is driven by accumulating evidence that the physical environment plays a crucial role. A University of Maryland study last year found that people who live in the most sprawling counties are the most likely to be overweight, and vice versa. And last month, the first study to examine the issue on a neighborhood level showed that people who live where stores and other businesses are within easy walking distance are significantly less likely to be overweight, primarily because they walk more and drive less.
"Having shops and services near where one lives is the best predictor of not being obese," said lead author Lawrence Frank of the University of British Columbia, adding that mixing housing and businesses also might make it easier to eat better by offering grocery stores instead of convenience stores and better-quality restaurants instead of fast-food outlets.
Another recent study found that poor people and minorities tend to have less access to parks, pools and other facilities that make exercise easier.
Several federal agencies, state and local governments, private foundations and community organizations have begun funding projects to encourage walking and physical activity.
� In Denver, developers are building a massive new neighborhood on the site of the former Stapleton International Airport that features sidewalks, pedestrian-friendly street patterns, open spaces and other attributes that are conducive to walking, bicycling and other outdoor activities.
� In Columbia, Mo., volunteers are organizing "walking school buses" in which parents escort lines of children to school on foot each day instead of having them sit on the bus. Officials also are slowing traffic flow, beefing up policing and improving crosswalks to make walking safer.
� In downtown Cleveland, volunteers are turning two old industrial sites in the low-income Slavic Village neighborhood into a golf course and a park, and transforming abandoned rail lines into trails for walking, cycling and other activities. Police there also are trying to make it safer for kids to walk to school.
� On the Winnebago Reservation in rural Nebraska, tribal leaders are building walkways across a major state highway that bisects the reservation, and building a new cluster of homes and businesses in the center of the community to encourage more walking by residents, who suffer from a high rate of diabetes.
Federal health officials are helping to develop a model planning code that communities can adopt, using local zoning, ordinances and tax incentives to require sidewalks and other measures to promote walking.
At King Farm, developers are nearly done constructing 3,200 housing units on 450 acres of old farmland. The nascent neighborhood was designed using so-called New Urbanism ideas, which in many ways re-create the lifestyle that existed in small towns until the 1940s and '50s.
The development consists of a mix of townhouses and single-family homes on streets that are narrower than typical suburban roads and bordered with wide sidewalks. Many homes have front porches. Garages are in back. Common areas and parks are scattered throughout. The homes are packed closely together around a commercial center that mixes office buildings with a grocery store, restaurants and other businesses.
Even so, the design remains far from ideal. The neighborhood is bordered on all sides by busy roadways that require residents to get back in their cars if they want to leave. They have to take a shuttle bus to get safely to the nearby subway station. Nevertheless, residents praise their new environs.
"This is the first time we've ever been able to walk to a Safeway," said Tiffany Berman, 34, who recently moved to the neighborhood with her husband, Lou. "We really don't use the car at all in the neighborhood. It's a really unusual place."