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HEALTHY COMMUNITIES

How our health is affected by how our cities are designed or planned? Not only architects and planners are responsible for the consequences in how cities are planned. Modern life in big cities and the traffic that this generates brings the "stress" that causes us to move at peak hours. Everyone can turn all these frustrations or challenges into solutions if we change our approach to how we feel when we move around the city.

The trend of having your own car and driving around the city is a very convenient solution, it is handy and especially it gives us social status, it makes things easier, it shortened the distances and time, but having your own car can also bring you a series of consequences that harm your health.

Sitting behind the wheel for long minutes during the day, plus the long hours spent sitting in our offices of physical inactivity increase the risk to become obese. Obesity brings chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and kidney problems among others.

An affordable and handy solution is the use of public transportation and bicycles, they both contributes to have a healthy and active life and help us to feel better. Unfortunately many of our cities are not prepared for the use of bicycles, especially for the aggressive way many automobilists drive and how danger is for the cyclists to share the roads with automobiles. It is therefore everyone's responsibility to create a collective consciousness to perform these changes if we want a healthy city.

Developed countries in Europe, Asia and in some cities in the United States are aware of the use of public transportation and bicycles. They both help to save energy, they make us  feels good,  help us to be connected to each other, they keep us fit and help us maintain a healthy environment.