ACTIVE Louisville: Incorporating Active Living Principles into Planning and Design

Abstract

ACTIVE Louisville was a collaboration working to introduce active living principles into a downtown redevelopment planning and design process, in order to create more vibrant neighborhoods where residents incorporate healthy habits into daily routines. ACTIVE Louisville worked to increase physical activity and health awareness in three low-income neighborhoods undergoing redevelopment related to the replacement of a public housing project with a new, mixed-income community under a federal HOPE VI grant. Working with local planners, neighborhood groups, community organizers, and housing officials, ACTIVE Louisville helped expand physical activity awareness and opportunities. ACTIVE Louisville leveraged limited funding to accomplish an ambitious work program and to generate resources through creative collaborations that influenced policy and practices. ACTIVE Louisville had a considerable impact on the design of the HOPE VI project, the mission of a local community center, and the approach of the Mayor's Healthy Hometown Movement of the Louisville Metro Department of Public Health and Wellness. Introducing healthy lifestyles to communities with high levels of inactivity requires an interdisciplinary approach that will have an enduring effect only if it is absorbed into policies and practices of local institutions. ACTIVE Louisville's association with the Louisville Metro Housing Authority and the housing authority's high-profile housing redevelopment project amplified ACTIVE Louisville's impact. ACTIVE Louisville's public health interventions were well timed: physical improvements were underway in its target neighborhoods, and ACTIVE Louisville was able to coordinate with and have influence on the community and government groups that were involved in the HOPE VI project and related neighborhood redevelopment.