400 MSU students help assess walkability in Springfield
More than 400 Missouri State University Students have started a project to assess walkability in Springfield:
“The Walkable Neighborhood Project allows our academic service-learning students and our student volunteers to engage in an opportunity to have a voice in making our streets and neighborhoods a great place to live,” said CASL Director Katherine Nordyke. “This type of project is the essence of service-learning and we are honored to be participating.”
The Healthy Living Alliance and partners will use walkability information they gather over the next year to help Springfield address barriers that currently exist to everyday walking such as a lack of sidewalks, safety issues and traffic. It will involve youth and families in telling their stories and painting their vision for the future.
In addition to the Active Neighborhood Checklists, the Healthy Living Alliance and partners will work over the fall and winter to collect information from residents through the use of Neighborland™ billboards and a website: neighborland.com/walkablespringfield. They will present findings and recommendations in the spring to city and community leaders.
The project's Neighborland.com web site allows Springfield residents to give their ideas about what they want to make the city more walkable. The web site has more details about the project:
The goal of the Walkable Neighborhood Project is to help build thriving neighborhoods where people are active and healthy, and businesses and families grow. The project will address a key piece of neighborhood vitality. That is, how easy, safe, and pleasant it is to get out of the house, meet neighbors, and walk to various destinations. To put it simply: How walkable is each neighborhood?
Our objectives are to build citywide attention to the value and urgency of walkable neighborhoods, and to attract public and private investments to improvements that residents identify as needed.
Three tools will be utilized to complete this project:
The Active Neighborhood Checklist: College students and volunteers will assess neighborhoods block-by-block to determine baseline information regarding environment. They will observe characteristics such as sidewalks, traffic, land use, and other indicators of safety and walkability. Missouri State University will provide 300-400 students, with additional help from Evangel and neighborhood volunteers. The data collected from the checklists will be compiled and analyzed by our external evaluator and we will receive a thorough report of the findings.Resident Input: Residents will be encouraged to write suggestions for their neighborhoods on big green billboards during community events. Resident input is valuable in determining needs and their participation is important to this project. Suggestions gathered from the billboards will also be included in the final report.
Photovoice Missouri: Middle and High School students will be encouraged to participate in Photovoice Missouri, a statewide program that engages students in their communities. Students will take pictures in their neighborhoods and then write captions for each photo with a focus on healthy lifestyles. Photos will be entered into a contest and will be displayed here in Springfield in the Spring of 2014.
Photo credit: Walkable Springfield
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