Stephanie Prince-Ware, a Ph.D. Candidate with HALO, was recently quoted in an article by the Toronto Star, “Where do kids get more exercise – the suburbs or the city?”
From the article:
According to the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, 12 per cent of Canadians’ trips to the grocery store, work, the library or school are on foot or by bicycle, compared with 46 per cent in the Netherlands, where urban design and policies encourage active transportation.
Canadian municipalities were awarded a D-minus for their planning efforts in the 2011 annual report card on child and youth physical activity conducted by Active Healthy Kids Canada.
But urban planning solutions aren’t black and white, as the Queen’s study illustrates, and a lot more research is needed, notes Stephanie Prince Ware of the Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research Group at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Ottawa.
People’s perceptions of how easy or difficult it is to access green space, for example, can be as powerful as the reality. The parental role model is also important.
To read the article in its entirety, click here.
