MTGA Trails Toolkit

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Link: Design Guidelines for Active Michigan Communities

“Active living environments are places where all people are able and inspired to use their feet to get them places. They are places where people of all ages, incomes and abilities can walk and bike-both for recreation and for transportation.”
- Michigan Governor’s Council on Physical Fitness, Health and Sports

Excerpt from Chapter 2: Design Essentials for Active Living:

The Guiding Principles

Transportation Begins and Ends with Walking

For virtually every trip—from home to the store, from the car to the office, from the office to a lunch date—at least part of the trip is on foot. For those who are able, walking is common to all forms of travel. Unfortunately, the walking part of the trip is often overlooked. As a good example, consider the parking lot at an average shopping center. The trip from your car to the front door can be unnerving. You have to dodge speeding vehicles cutting across parking lanes, hop out of the way of vehicles suddenly backing out of spaces, and dash to the front door to avoid inclement weather. No wonder people hunt for the closest parking spot!

Plan for Your Most Vulnerable Populations

Regular physical activity should be a lifelong goal for everyone, but many cities and towns have hurdles that limit activity for some people. When planning for facilities and infrastructure, keep in mind the needs of children as well as elderly and disabled residents. They tend to move more slowly and be less visible to other people in public.Work with your local planner to survey these groups, or speak with their advocacy organizations. Ensure that sidewalks, street designs, public transit stops, public spaces, and parks and recreation facilities meet their needs. When a community’s design works for the most vulnerable residents, it works for everyone.

Complete Your Streets

Make sure that streets work for all users, not just for those in vehicles. A complete street fully accommodates pedestrians by providing safe and accessible sidewalks, well-marked crosswalks, street lighting for safety, and tree shade for comfort. The street should employ design elements or traffic calming techniques that slow cars. For bicyclists, a complete street provides marked bike lanes or wide curb lanes, marked bicycle routes, and signs advising motorists of the presence of bicyclists. One way to figure out which streets need completing is to create a bicycle and pedestrian master plan. Good examples can be found in “Active Living and Recreation Resources” near the end of this book; see the “Policies and Planning” section.

Create a Transportation Network with Many Connections

A robust transportation network links valued destinations through a variety of means and routes. Think of a spider web: a network with many connections, where threads of differing thickness represent different modes of transportation. More connections mean shorter distances between the places you want to go and thus less time to get to your destination. A network offering multiple modes of transportation also can make it easier to get places. For example, to bike to a friend’s house you could ride on streets with bike lanes, then hop onto a shared-use path, and finally get on a bus equipped with a bike rack.

Ensure Equitable Access to Opportunities for Activity

Active living design provides people of all means with close and easy access to areas that enhance physical activity, such as parks and trails. During planning, consider the proposed placement of such areas. If a trail can be reached only via busy roads or if the park with play equipment is too far away, a parent might hesitate to push a baby in a stroller to get there. Make facilities available to all groups in society. A family without a car may not have the means to reach even the nearest park. Older, built-up neighborhoods, for instance, may have less open space or fewer parks than newer ones—although they may have better sidewalks! Local governments should list their physical activity assets, determine areas with deficits, and take action, such as creating pocket parks or investing in sidewalks, to ensure walk- and bikeability for all.

Build with Safety and Security in Mind

Physical activity has two precursors: safety and security. Safety means that when people windowshop on the street or sprint up a hill on a shared-use path, they feel confident that they will come to no physical harm. Good design and maintenance are essential to feeling safe. For example, sidewalks need to be well lit and buffered from vehicles on roadways by planted strips, street trees, or parking.Walking and biking surfaces need to be level and clear of debris. Low-hanging branches that narrow usable space, threaten eyes, and obstruct visibility must be removed. Intersections should be designed to prioritize pedestrian safety and reduce conflicts with motor vehicles.

Security means that pedestrians and bicyclists can move without fear of crime or some other threat, such as an unleashed dog. Security is strongly linked to people’s perception of the environment.While crime might not be an actual problem, the fear of crime deters physical activity. Again, design is critical to feeling secure. Try to maximize the number of “eyes on the street” (Jacobs, 1961). The more people you have on the street or watching the street, the stronger your feeling of security even if surrounded by strangers. To enhance security, businesses and homes should have doorways and windows oriented toward the street. In shopping areas, commercial buildings and parking garages should have retail businesses on the first floor; encourage restaurants to have sidewalk cafes or verandahs. In residential districts, houses placed closer to narrowed streets can create a welcoming, secure neighborhood feeling.

Embrace Downtowns, Density, and Mixed Use

Density is the critical ingredient of an exciting built environment. Density means there are enough people and attractive destinations close enough together to encourage enjoyable life on a street. Higher densities are a key trait of some of Michigan’s most attractive urban areas: the shopping areas of downtown Holland; the cafes, restaurants, and bars of Main Street, Ann Arbor; and the loft apartments, shops, and art galleries of Royal Oak. Market research has shown that people like density if it is “done right.” In fact, densely developed walkable communities now constitute one of the highest value sectors of the real estate market.

How is density done right? One way is to mix land uses. This allows commercial spaces, such as retail shops, galleries, and restaurants, to mingle with residential dwelling units, such as loft apartments and townhouses, and with public facilities and buildings, such as libraries and small parks. Land uses can be mixed both horizontally (existing side by side) and vertically (stacked on top of one another, such as a loft apartment above a coffee shop). Mixing land use encourages active living by bringing people’s homes and work closer to the other places they want to go, then making it easer to walk or bike. To move toward an active living environment, think about how to increase the mixed use and density of your community.

Remember That Aesthetics Matter

Physical activity is positively associated with pleasing environments. While you might think that aesthetics are in the eye of the beholder, the research literature shows a lot of agreement on what people find attractive and what motivates them to get outside and move. Quality buildings, streets, and landscaping—trees, shrubs, flowers, and other plantings— make a community a more appealing place to be active (Kaplan and Kaplan, 1989; Kaplan et al., 1998). Plants provide interest; they soften the appearance of hard surfaces and provide color, fragrance, and seasonal interest. Trees provide critical shade, reduce temperatures in urbanized areas, and help reduce carbon dioxide. They can also help separate pedestrians from motor vehicle traffic. Attractive and well-maintained homes, interesting buildings, fine public libraries, beautiful streetscapes, and public art create places that inspire people to be physically active (Brownson et al., 2001).

When advocating new design approaches in your community, don’t dodge a discussion of aesthetics.Where do you like to visit and stroll? Where do you not take out-of-town guests? Why? When you know the elements you like and dislike, you can develop a better active living environment. Formbased codes can also help communities create and maintain a pleasing local character (see the “Form-Based Codes” box in Chapter 7 on page 71).

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