This week I was in Washington DC presenting a poster on my thesis work at the Active Living Research Conference. Friday's schedule featured some activity for the participants in the form of walking tours, group runs and even yoga. I figured that I should disseminate some of the information I was exposed to at the conference. The theme related to linking research and policy and we heard from Oregon Rep Earl Blumenauer. He's a bike fanatic and you can see him on The Colbert Report below. Also are some of the best links I hear about.
Travelsmart a site from the Australian Government with information to help citizens make smarter travel choices. Also, the old guy at the top looks like he has the same helmet as me.
Perils for PedestriansThe guy who ran this was also at the conference. It looks like he puts out a show about the perils for pedestrians on some public tv station.
I first heard about Smart Growth America'sGrowing Cooler Report at APHA in November. It came up again in a talk from DC's director of planning on Friday morning. It relates directly to the type of questions I'll be asking about how climate change affects urban areas and vice versa.
The Participatory Photo Mapping Project at the University of Wisconsin was one of the coolest presentations I saw while I was at the conference. It combines photovoice with GPS and GIS to map the issues that residents identify themselves. Reminded me a bit of the work we started in Bogotá this summer and gave me some new ideas.
There was a lot of talk and presenting at the conference that related to schools and children. At times it seemed that we were always talking about tackling childhood obesity but not much about changing our own habits. CDC's SHPPS website has the baseline data to introduce you to this issue and to point out some of the weaker spots in the policy that guide school diets and curriculum. Some of the best slogans to come out of these discussions were
"you can't spell GPA without PA" and
"No child left inside"
There were plenty more informative speakers and tons of things I guess I could point you to but I hope that this gets you thinking and maybe even more active.
3 comments:
Isn't "Growing Cooler" by Reed Ewing, who is interviewing for Director of City Planning at the very establishment you are considering continuing the next few years of your life studying? Hmmm, that could be quite nice for you . . . .
I am familiar with Reid's work on assessing the built environment but did not know that he was the lead author on the Smart Growth document or that he was talking to GaTech. That is exciting. I did get to talk with Robert Cervero at ALR and he mentioned that he studied at Georgia Tech and that he had talked with some colleagues who were interviewing for the position. Maybe it was Ewing, it would be great to get him.
I forgot on of the best phrases related to physical activity among children. I heard someone say they wanted to see more "free range children."
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