Designing Healthy Communities: Stamford

This Healthy Communities initiative in Stamford, Connecticut, has three primary objectives: to initiate a longitudinal study of the impacts on activity levels of a new strategically located greenway and park design interventions; to raise awareness of health and activity issues in a largely minority and disadvantaged neighborhood in Stamford, Connecticut, that is a typical ​“first ring suburban neighborhood”; and to build new partnerships between town planning and health professionals.

A phone survey of 400 residents was administered in the spring of 2002. Few of the respondents get the recommended 30 minutes of exercise five or more days a week and many have sedentary jobs (5+ hours of sitting a day). About half of the respondents find the West Side to be a walkable environment. Significant numbers indicated that they would walk to the park more often and walk along the Mill River park greenway to get to downtown Stamford or the Transportation Center more often if certain design and programming changes were implemented. This suggests that when the survey is re-administered after the greenway is complete; it may show some impact on activity levels of the design interventions.