Oklahoma City: The City That Declared War On Obesity - Digg

Headlines are quick hits from media outlets from Missouri and around the world. Follow the headline link for the full story. The source of this headline says:

Oklahoma City has declared war on fat. First the mayor — realizing he had become clinically obese just as his hometown was identified by a magazine as one of America’s most overweight cities — challenged his citizens to collectively lose a million pounds. But hitting that target was just the start: this veteran Republican politician then took on the car culture that shaped his nation and asked citizens to back a tax rise to fund a redesign of the state capital around people.

This unleashed an incredible range of initiatives, including the creation of parks, sidewalks, bike lanes and landscaped walking trails across the city. Every school is getting a gym. With the new emphasis on exercise, city officials spent $100 million creating the world’s finest rowing and kayaking centre in a Midwest town with no tradition of the sport beforehand. Overweight people are targeted at home and at work to alter their lifestyles, while data are used to discover the districts with the worst health outcomes so that resources can be poured in to change behavior.

The experiment is unusual in terms of its ambition, breadth and cost, all of which take it beyond anything being attempted by other American cities in the fight against fat. . . .

An admirable achievement, with the campaign proving a clever way to raise awareness. But for all the publicity, Cornett’s ambitions had grown way beyond that original simple stunt: now he wanted to remake his huge metropolis by remolding it around people in place of cars. Or as he explained it, “putting the community back in the community”. Yet although these days hailed as an urban visionary, he readily admits there was no ‘grand plan’ at the outset. . . .

He was partly spurred into action by another of those lists loved by magazines, when his hometown was labelled worst for walking in the country. Cornett contacted a planning expert named Jeff Speck, who conducted a survey of the city that concluded it had twice as many car lanes as needed. The result was the dismantling of its one-way system, seen as encouraging faster driving, along with the start of a project to install hundreds of miles of pavements, parks, trees, bike lanes, sports facilities and on-street parking to create a ‘steel barrier’ between those thundering freeways and pedestrians.

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Oklahoma City: The City That Declared War On Obesity - Digg

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So many of the issues with Oklahoma City--like a population ranked among the highest in the U.S. for obesity, vast sprawling underused road networks, and a culture that has for decades undervalued the outdoors, recreation, and exercise are very reminiscent of the issues we face in Missouri cities.

If they can do it in Oklahoma City, we can certain do it here in Missouri . . .