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Fitness

Take a walk and call me in the morning - thumb
Summer 2016

Make your community walkable

Step It Up! is the U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy’s campaign to promote walking and walkable communities. The following whiteboard animation video highlights that walking can be an easy form of physical activity that fosters social connections and shows how we can all get involved to make our communities more walkable.

The nonprofit Walkable and Livable Communities Institute, headquartered in Port Townsend, supports and teaches communities interested in walkability. They describe their vision “to create healthy, connected communities that support active living and that advance opportunities for all people through walkable streets, livable cities and better built environments.”

For example, they offer … » More …

Tangletown in Seattle
Summer 2016

It takes a (walkable) village

They call it Tangletown—a Seattle neighborhood where streets and trolley tracks intersect like wayward skeins of yarn. In the 1930s, local residents routinely chose the trolley for trips to work, the market, or hardware store. They did that several times a day and it involved a lot of walking, says Glen Duncan, professor in the Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine and chair of nutrition and exercise physiology at WSU Spokane.

Duncan lived in Green Lake near Tangletown for a time, and says public transportation systems like trollies provided a level of physical activity that is all but lost in today’s society.

“We’re completely … » More …