St. Luke’s Health Initiatives has been moving upstream from basic health needs towards root causes of health improvement for 17 years. Together with a grassroots working group and the City of Phoenix, we are working on the adoption of a Complete Streets policy to positively influence the ways we move in and connect with our communities.
Streets are a city’s lifeblood, to the point that key city streets are often referred to as “arterials.” Phoenix’s 4,500 miles of roadway have a profound influence on its 1.45 million residents. The majority of those environments are engineered and constructed primarily to move the optimal number of vehicles efficiently. Inadvertently, focus on improving the “level of service” for cars has rendered streets less effective at accommodating pedestrians, cyclists, public transit and options for healthy community revitalization.
Working with a passionate, well-informed and dedicated group of community and city collaborators, SLHI helped to form the Phoenix Complete Streets Working Group in December 2012 and January 2013 that offered its collective commitment to developing a draft policy for Phoenix City Council to consider for adoption. Nine months later that draft, modeled on national best practices and lessons from other municipalities’ implementations, was completed and made available for public comment. After an appropriate public comment period and subsequent City Council deliberation, a vote to approve the draft policy is expected in the Spring of 2014.
The Phoenix Complete Streets Working Group’s passion to advocate for policy adoption led the group to simplify and promote the concept by producing a brief Complete Streets Guide that has been broadly applauded and began circulating in September 2013. Plans are on the drawing board to adapt the guide for use by other Arizona cities, towns and/or regions.
In Complete Streets policies we see important opportunities to enable healthier and more productive lives. At the most basic level, we know that safer, more convenient and more accessible infrastructure for walking, cycling and public transit encourages regular physical activity that can reduce the risk of obesity and other correlated chronic conditions. We also have cataloged study after study revealing that Complete Streets policies improve city vitality on multiple measures of health, well-being, community improvement and economic growth – and with a solid return on investment.
Health and cities have one foundational leverage point in common. They are both nurtured and sustained by connections that are optimized for diversity, positive behaviors and well-being. Complete Streets policy stands at the intersection to a better way forward on both fronts.