Shaunna Burbidge completed her PhD from UCSB Geography in Spring 2008 with a dissertation titled “Evaluating the Impact of Neighborhood Trail Development on Active Travel Behavior and Overall Physical Activity.” Shaunna, now a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of City and Metropolitan Planning at the University of Utah, pursued her studies of travel behavior with a six month long survey of Utah cities regarding their implementation of policies that either promote or discourage physical activity. “We wanted to find out if cities are moving in the right direction, if they’re realizing what they do in regard to land use and transportation actually has a public health impact,” commented Burbidge. Predictably, Shaunna concluded that most cities don’t have strong ordinances in place, and the Utah Department of Health backs her finding, noting that Utah cities tend to discourage daily physical activity because of poor design or dangerous streets.
Shaunna used 25 undergraduate geography students to analyze the zoning codes, master plans, and ordinances of 81 Utah cities with populations of 5,000 and above to determine whether or not they have ordinances that:
- Require sidewalks, bike lanes, greenways and recreational facilities for new, redeveloped and mixed-use communities;
- Require new commercial buildings to encourage physical activity and bicycle and pedestrian commuter traffic;
- Require recreational shared-use paths that combine biking and walking.
According to the AP article used in The Salt Lake Tribune, “The percentage of Utah adults who are overweight or obese has more than doubled in the past 20 years — to 63 percent. Nearly one in five Utah third-graders are overweight, according to the health department, which helped fund Burbidge’s study…The Utah Department of Health plans to use Burbidge’s findings to help cities change their policies to make it as easy to walk and bike as it is to drive — if that is what they want.” The complete article can be found here; Shaunna’s findings were also picked up by Planetizen.
.jpg)
