By Brigitte Pellerin, Ottawa Citizen, September 8, 2019
The trick to help a city’s population become healthier isn’t to make everyone do jumping jacks. It’s to design our public spaces in ways that naturally nudge us into moving around more without having to think about it.
The City of Ottawa has ambitious goals to increase active transportation (that is, walking, biking, using public transit). Additionally, the new official plan will focus on creating complete “15-minute neighbourhoods” where everything you need on a daily basis is within a short walk, decreasing our dependence on cars.
(...)We’re not starting from scratch in Ottawa, where we already have a healthy cycling community and a good number of paths. Érinn Cunningham, a board member of Bike Ottawa, says the Laurier bike lanes, multi-use pathways along the O-Train and some sections of the Transitway are “a good start at building some important active transportation links.”
https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/columnists/pellerin-healthy-ottawa-lets-make-it-safer-to-move-around-the-city