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Overview
Healthy Places: Designing an Active Colorado is an initiative to inspire and support the development of healthy communities. Through community-led processes, Healthy Places will help Colorado communities become healthier places to live, work and play. The initiative aims to increase physical activity by fostering a built environment where it is easier, safer and more appealing to walk, play and engage in daily activities that encourage movement, connection and fun.
Selected communities
In late 2012, the Foundation received 26 requests for participation for the Healthy Places initiative from communities across the Colorado.
Among those, the three communities selected to participate in the initiative are:
- The southeast portion of Arvada (a suburb in metro Denver)
- Lamar (a small town in rural southeastern Colorado)
- Westwood (an urban neighborhood in southwest Denver)
These three communities were chosen based on need, location diversity, and existing level of community activism and interest.
To kick off the initiative, each of the three communities participated in week long panel process with the Urban Land Institute (ULI). ULI’s expert panelists assessed community needs, interviewed stakeholders and generated initial recommendations for building communities that promote physically active lifestyles.
Resources
- See community pages for ULI reports and presentations in Arvada, Lamar and Westwood.
- Active Transportation and Real Estate: The Next Frontier explores the interconnections among walking, bicycling and real estate development. It showcases the growing synergies between real estate development and bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure investments.
- Health Elevations: Re:Built - Digging deep on the healthy places movement and mapping future roadblocks.
- ULI Recommendations Lead to On-the-Ground Results - ULI sent a team leader back to the three communities to report on their remarkable progress and share how recommendations are coming to life.
- Ten Principles for Building Healthy Places - ULI sets out ten important principles that can be used to create a new approach to building healthy communities.
- Intersections: Health and the Built Environment looks at the relationship between how healthy we are and the way our buildings and communities function.
- Building for Wellness: The Business Case highlights 13 projects that were developed with health and wellness in mind and explores the business case for incorporating health into development projects.
- Housing in America: Integrating Housing, Health, and Resilience in a Changing Environment examines the role of housing in creating healthy and resilient communities in the face of climate change.
- Retail in Underserved Communities explores factors that hamper retail development in some lower-income communities and offers solutions.
Additional information
For questions regarding Healthy Places, please contact Chris Smith, senior program officer, 303.953.3661.
