Walk for Your Life! Restoring Neighborhood Walkways to Enhance Community Life, Improve Street Safety and Reduce Obesity [Paperback]

Marie Demers (Author), James O. Hill (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 15, 2005

With obesity at an all-time high, America's sidewalks vanishing from our suburbs, pedestrians and bicyclists at risk along many thoroughfares, and a looming fuel crisis on the horizon, we need to reevaluate personal and societal walking values. This thought-provoking book calls for the restoration of a walkable environment as a starting point for addressing these pressing issues.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

This is a book about walking but it is really about more than walking. It is about what we want our future to be. Will we leave our children a world where obesity and poor health is the norm or will we do what it takes to create an environment that supports health and wellness? Believe it or not, it all starts with walking. -- James O. Hill, Founder of America On The Move

About the Author

Marie Demers holds an M.A. in Psychology, and a Ph.D. in Epidemiology from Laval University (Quebec City). She worked as a health researcher for the last 25 years. She was involved for years in primary care research, and it rapidly became obvious to her that a large part of health problems encountered in primary care – and treated mostly with medications – were easily preventable through the adoption of healthier lifestyle habits. Her previous background in psychology, biology and anthropology and extensive traveling experience around the world taught her that the environment plays a role as important as personal behavior in developing those habits. She decided to write Walk for Your Life, showing the role of the environment in the disappearance of walking, and the modifications required to restore a walkable environment.

"As an avid pedestrian and cyclist, I am deeply aware of the barriers to walking and cycling in the urban environment. Nevertheless, I chose to live in an area where I can get access to everything on foot – even my office."

Product Details

• Paperback: 243 pages
• Publisher: Vital Health Publishing (December 15, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1890612499
• ISBN-13: 978-1890612498
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,665,239 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Book on Walkable Communities, April 9, 2006

By 

baloghblog "http://www.groovygreen.com" (Syracuse, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Walk for Your Life! Restoring Neighborhood Walkways to Enhance Community Life, Improve Street Safety and Reduce Obesity (Paperback)

My wife picked up this book for me, since she knew I am interested in walkable communities, and it didn't disappoint.

It is filled with the history of communities, and takes a page from Kunstler's earlier works regarding suburbia and sprawl. I liked the ties that she made between our increasingly sedentary lifestyles and obesity, illness, and childhood disease. Ms. Demers discusses our dependence on cars, the hostile environment design to limit walking to desitinations. She finishes the book with some suggested solutions, for individuals, communities, and the design of future neighborhoods. Some of the information in the book I have gathered from other sources, but it is a good overall reference for walkable communities, and increasing the amount of walking that you do in your daily life. I especially liked some of the "side" stories that she had in there. For example, how advances in packaging and decreased food preparation and clean-up has made our lives easier, but has led to more time on the couch and less time that would have been spent standing to prepare a meal and then clean it up after. (That's why that fat-free cake didn't lead to my weight loss...heh heh)

It comes with a 4/5 star recommendation from me. I would have given the 5th star if there was more information on how to go about affecting change in your community (petitions, attending town meetings, etc.) Pick it up from Amazonm for a good quick informative read.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Ha! THAT'S Why I Don't Walk More, February 9, 2006

By 

WON - See all my reviews

This review is from: Walk for Your Life! Restoring Neighborhood Walkways to Enhance Community Life, Improve Street Safety and Reduce Obesity (Paperback)

This is one of those elephants in the living room sorts of book. I liked reading it because it articulated many of my own frustrations about my neighborhood and my ability to be outside. "Is there a simpler or more natural activity than walking? Then, how could such a healthy human activity become so dangerous and unwelcome in just a few decades?" In Walk for your Life! these questions are asked and answered. How DID we suburbanites get to accepting, to not even thinking about the disappearance of walking as a daily occurrence, a no big deal sort of activity? I'm a baby boomer. I remember walking to school, staying out playing until dark. In my case, I now live in a neighborhood where our family has always commented on how completely convenient our home is to everything. And it is. We live on a lake, our home is very attractive. It's also within walking distance to the local convenience store, a little further a complete supermarket, the sports club, the post office and Fed Ex, seven or eight restaurants, bookstore, and every sort of retail store. And, when I first moved here, I actually did try to walk to these places. But, sporadic sidewalks give way to narrowed or non-existent shoulders on the roads where I had to wait until the cars let up and then sprint across those areas. Not to mention, I felt conspicuous as I walked along. Not another soul in sight the entire walk, other than in passing cars. I remember thinking that if I ever tried this again, I needed to be dressed as a jogger. What I had been trying to do was walk as a means of transportation, not for exercise or as a special leisure activity. I didn't realize that until I read this book. A ha! I saw a really big elephant and it's shaped like a SUV! So, our home IS convenient, as long as we use our car. Walk for your Life! points out what is wrong with this picture, and offers ways to bring back all kinds of walking into our lives.
The book made me think about my own life as a walker and also about the big picture -- road and town planning and zoning, about watching life on TV rather than being outside in it with my neighbors, about reduced health and being fat for not moving around more. It's not only worth reading, it's also well written and very readable. It's also got a great list of resources - organizations that promote walking, other books, websites.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Personal health in a social framework, January 21, 2006

By 

Organic Planet "DR" (Ridgefield, CT USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Walk for Your Life! Restoring Neighborhood Walkways to Enhance Community Life, Improve Street Safety and Reduce Obesity (Paperback)

Walk For Your Life is an articulate perspective on why the art of walking is on the decline in our computerized, automated and industrialized world. With obesity at an all-time high, especially among children and teens, and obesity- and sedentary lifestyle-related diseases precipitously on the rise, this is an important and timely new book!

Epidemiologist and walking enthusiast, Dr. Marie Demers, explains how our attitudes toward walking are a sociological phenomenon and not just an idiosyncratic personal response to environmental factors. We drive cars to the supermarket or the mall because our communities have been designed around the automobile rather than the on the human scale of the older walkable neighborhoods and communities.

This book offers encouragement to individuals to walk more regularly and purposefully. It offers advise to community planners, zoning boards and educators on how to create and/or maintain the "walkability" and pedestrian safety of our communities. And it offers a vision for a healthier, friendlier and more active society where walking is enjoyed by all as a essential part of everyday life.

I heartily recommend Walk For Your Life! to everyone who wants
to be healthier and who wants to live in a healthier, safer and friendlier community.