ULI Building Healthy Places Toolkit

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3 Provide sidewalks and enticing, pedestrian oriented streetscapes

  • Strategies
  • Insights
Photo: New York City Department of Transportation

Evidence Based Strategies

  • Build sidewalks in all new communities to encourage walking and to help keep pedestrians safe.
  • Include well-marked crosswalks, special pavers, and curb extensions to visually highlight pedestrians and slow traffic.
  • Light streets, trails, and public spaces to minimize dark and unsafe areas.

Best Practice Strategies

  • Maximize transparency of facades at ground level—for instance, with windows—to increase visual interest and promote walkability.
  • Provide amenities such as bike racks, street lamps, public art, benches, and bus shelters to turn sidewalks into more appealing spaces.
  • Include street trees and benches along sidewalks to provide shade and respite for pedestrians and joggers.
  • Within large projects, provide maps and signage oriented to pedestrians—with mileage and key destination points in the area—to help people feel at ease about walking and biking.

Richard J. Jackson, M.D.

Professor, Environmental Health Sciences
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Fielding School of Public Health
 
  • Health happens not in your doctor’s office but where you live. Our high-cost medical system is mostly ineffective in creating healthfulness. We can’t change our genes, but we can create good places, homes, and communities that make it easier for us to be more active, happier, and healthier.

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Building Healthy Places

The ULI Building Healthy Places Initiative is leveraging the power of ULI’s global networks to shape projects and places in ways that improve the health of people and communities.

Acknowledgements

The Center for Active Design served as contributing author and expert content advisor for this project.
The project was supported by the Colorado Health Foundation, the estate of Melvin Simon, and the ULI Foundation.

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