There may be a correlation between two reports released in recent weeks looking at Birmingham, AL and our metro area’s level of fitness.
Last week The Atlantic published a piece by Richard Florida, one of their senior editors best known for his book The Rise of the Creative Class (affiliate link) and the accompanying website. It focused on the results of this year’s American College of Sports Medicine‘s American Fitness Index, an index that included Birmingham, AL.
The report points out that metro Birmingham, although ranking 47th out of 50 areas examined in this study, contains more farmers markets and more park units per capita than the other cities though most of it sits outside of the urban areas.
The folks over at the Living Streets Alliance pointed out the striking correlation between those cities with high percentages of commuting to work by bike and those cities that were among considered the most fit in the index. The results of a report referenced recently by The Birmingham News could also be looked at as a reason for our metro area’s fitness ranking – it lists the Birmingham-Hoover metro area as the 16th most dangerous for pedestrians in the country (with 136 between 2000-2009).
It’s not like metro Birmingham hasn’t started trying to address the issues including Railroad Park’s “Get Healthy on the Railroad” and the Our One Mile initiatives.
Photo: Thinking. Max Wolfe/Flickr.
