“Active”

1 : engaged in an action or activity // Physical Activity

Why does physical activity matter for urban design, How is being physically active measured?

 

In the last decades, most modern life activities have been manifestations of sedentary actions and today two-thirds of the people over 15 years old in the European Union are not physically active at recommended levels (1) due to the mechanization of work and daily tasks, car dependency, and increase in inactive leisure pursuits. Existing research links sedentary living with adverse health outcomes and many chronic diseases, causing an estimated 600,000 deaths each year in Europe. Increased physical activity is associated with the reduction of cardiovascular diseases, type II diabetes, cancer, stress levels. The financial burden of these diseases is estimated at €17.5 billion in the UK and at $3.82 trillion in the US (2019). Therefore minimizing this cost is one of the major driving forces manifested in a design that encourages residents to be physically active. This relatively recent approach is quantified by the World Health Organization (WHO) healthy city movement that was begun in 1986 and shaped in 2008. The shift in the WHO’s definition for a healthy city into "not the achievement of any particular health status rather is the one that is continually creating and improving opportunities in the built and social environment and expanding community resources to enable all its citizens to be physically active in day-to-day life” (2) supports that global concerns about rising levels of physical inactivity, and obesity and their impacts, have made physical activity a vital area of investment in urban design with a view to reducing the risk of these chronic diseases. 

 

Opportunities to increase health and fıtness are embedded in the urban fabric. These can be seen in components in buildings and in neighborhoods where people live, work, and study. There is an important distinction between health-enhancing physical activity and exercise/sports. Public Health Report (1985) defines health-enhancing physical activity “as bodily movement produced by skeletal muscles that result in energy expenditure” (3), Unlike exercise that is planned and structured actions. Therefore, being physically active is not limited to designed recreation and sport nor being fit. This can make measuring individuals' physical activity level for universal assessment seems quite problematic. 

 

There are different methods and dimensions of measuring physical activity both at the individual level and city-scale level. Individual physical activity level (PAL) is a metric measure of physical activity performed in a 24-hour period - "a person's total energy required/used over 24 hours divided by the basal metabolic rate in 24 hours"- is assigned a metabolic equivalent tasks (METs) value based on its intensity and duration.(4)

On the other hand, a common approach to measuring city-wide physical activity level includes gathering a sufficiently large number of representative city dwellers, making questionnaire-based surveys (commonly, the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ) is used), calculating the median of the data. Based on these single number, health prescriptions for physical activity are prepared for sedentary citizens, promotion for an active living is expressed: “at least 150 minutes of moderate physical activity or 75 minutes of strong physical activity every week for achieving active living” that the WHO’s “A healthy city is an active city” statement suggests.(5)

 

 

2 : characterized by action, operative rather than by contemplation // Active Living  

What is active living and how it is perceived by health initiatives? 

 

The way of combining physical activity and recreation activities into people's everyday routine, from walking to the shops, carrying groceries, cleaning house or biking to work into the definition of "active living" while “non-active” refers to sedentary behavior which is characterized by an energy expenditure of 1.5 or fewer PAL based on sedentary behavior research (SBRN) terminology. Early studies published by the World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control on physical inactivity associated the built environment with  factors that discouraged residents from making more physically active choices. These factors can include unsafe outdoor areas, high-density traffic, pollution, lack of parks, sidewalks, and sports/recreation facilities. As a result of this association between urbanity and a lack of health, active living has become a growing field that aims to mitigate diseases of design.

 

 

3 : having the power of producing or involving action // Active Design initiatives 

What is Active design initiative, and the limits and potentials of active design?

 

Active living initiatives can be described as initiatives that promote a way of life in which people incorporate organized or informal physical activity into their daily routines (ACT Government, 2016) Although, the term is included in urban planning and health policy and is adopted for urban planning measures and behavior change programs, it seems there is no commonly accepted definition in academic literature perhaps due to the fact that the term has arisen relatively recently. 

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The main focus of my research is on The Center For Active Design (CfAD) which is a non-profit organization that aims to guide policymakers and different urban stakeholders who are interested in improving built environments. To combat diseases of design and to enhance active living in the urban environment, several New York City agencies; including the Departments of Design and Construction, Health and Mental Hygiene, Transportation and City Planning, and academicians, published the Active Design Guidelines: Promoting Physical Activity and Health in Design in 2010 under the roof of The Center For Active Design (CfAD). The CFAD defines their guidelines as evidence-based and best-practice strategies for increasing physical activity in the urban design elements, including widening sidewalks, making stairs more accessible and installing traffic calming elements that slow driving speeds. Through their so-called low-budget, easily implemented strategies, and overall approach of “the translation of health researches into design solutions that amplify the role of architecture and urban planning in improving public health and well-being” the CfAD have influenced many other cities to create their active design collaborations and initiatives like; Sport England (2014), Active Design Miami (2015)

 

Limits and Potentials of Active Design

 

The Center for Active Design (CfAD) evidence seems to rely on generalized medical theory and the measurements of physical activity which they give point-blank credence to in informing their spatial interventions. This can be seen in CfAD's evidence for making more attractive stairs and sidewalks strategies that "6 floors of stair usage a day burns enough calories to prevent average - U.S. adult - annual weight gain'' or “each km walked contributes a 5% decrease in the risk of obesity” These shreds of evidence, which are formed to guarantee or promote "collective human vitality, morbidity, and longevity" based on the measurements and tracks of phenomena that impact wellbeing -physical activity-, is associated with Foucault's concept of the biopower: The biopolitics of the population that focuses on the population as a collective form of human life; Power form that control, organize and optimize the energies of individual and collective life in order to maximize and generate life. 

 

Moreover, CfAD strategies treat health and wellness largely and implicitly as a condition that can be achieved equally by all citizens by way of chronic disease management and prevention. As a result, differences in the ability of people accordıng to different social-economic and cultural backgrounds to manage their health, approach to active living, and engage in physical activity in the city are given little explicit attention strategies. For instance, the guidelines do not take into account the promotion for the activation of persons with disabilities.

 

Another limit of CfAD's active design strategies does not highlight or promote diverse and complex potential forms of activation in urban contexts by predisposing certain design elements like bicycle storages, traffic calming elements rather than reading, pop-up exhibition platforms and moderate physical activities including running, walking, and cycling. Therefore their ideal image for an active person or subject appears like the one who engages with certain types of activity that is more efficient for health in the city.

 

The CfAD’s research has the potential to address social equity, particularly in neighborhoods that struggle with health issues in relation to 'obesogenic environments'  which is characterized by inappropriate land development, lack of investment, distribution of activity areas, and lack of access to healthy food. On the other hand, in contradiction with this, the priorities of their guidelines have the potential to cause uneven development by directing the selection of the more advantageous and productive places in the city for the implementations that promote desired - greater than 3.5 METs- physical activity.

 

Additionally, CfAD's actions cover a wide range of supposedly socially and environmentally responsible trends in design and urban planning. Through their open-source guidelines it allows to loosen the existing systems of power and authority among the urban decision-makers in a generative way, For example, as stated in Assembly: Civic Design Guidelines published by the Center for Active Design (2018) their strategy outcomes such as well-maintained public greenery and vacant lots helps to increase civic trust for political agencies and participation in community and in policymaking (well-maintained and poorly-maintained greenery outcomes in civic trust  +%8  and -%11 respectively). Therefore CfAD has a potential for being more active in terms of engaging or involving "design activism" that became well-known with Victor Papanek serves as an umbrella term  incorporates many design approaches indicates “a voluntarist, politically motivated impetus: a desire to generate and balancing positive social, institutional, environmental and/or economic change”  (Fuad-Luke,2009) 

CfAD's guidelines and planning principles are understood to have been commonly recognized as an essential component of any strategy aimed at addressing urgent global problems including inactivity and public health issues, as well as population management and climate change for good urban development. I have aimed to present their approach and principles toward health and wellbeing through physical activity in relation to definitions of the concept of "active" and tried to highlight the contradictions and limits as well as potentials behind these so-called evidence-based and best-practice strategies.

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The creative project aims to highlight the critical points of the research including contradictions, limits, and potentials of Active Design strategies and evidence. Through the GIF formats, series of motions imagined in Linnahall which is an abandoned multi-purpose hall in Tallinn, Estonia situated in the harbor, just beyond the walls of the Old Town and one of the important structures from the Soviet period.

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