Courtesy of Active Kids, Healthy Community
The latest desert that District residents must contend with doesn’t involve food, but instead exercise. The Active Kids, Healthy Community initiative has created maps that detail the lack of safe spaces for physical activity by ward.
The campaign defines a physical activity desert as “an urban area in which it is difficult to find a safe, affordable place to engage in physical activity.” The maps are dotted to indicate the locations of D.C. recreation centers, community centers, playgrounds, tennis courts, Boys and Girls Clubs, YMCA’s, and schools that are open to the public for recreational use. The maps’ backgrounds are shaded to show high crime areas where robberies, murders, and assaults have taken place.
Much like the city’s food deserts, the most concerning voids in this instance are concentrated in neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River. Ward 7 is “by far the worst,” according to Andrea Albersheim of Advocates for Better Children and Diet, which created the Active Kids, Healthy Community initiative with the Greater Washington Region American Heart Association.
While parks account for more than a fifth of the city’s land, some children in Ward 7 still have to walk more than a half mile to a recreation space, and they do so in dangerous conditions, Albersheim says. According to recent reports, crime in Ward 7 has tripled in 2016 compared to this time last year. And in addition to violence, Albersheim points out, many children also have to travel along major roadways to get to activity spaces, which presents another level of danger. The map also indicates this.
The study comes on the heels of proposed legislation by Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen that asks the Department of General Services to create a task force to identify possible issues and develop recommendations for the city’s Use of School Facilities and Grounds program. According to Albersheim, the current program has “a confusing system that not all the schools are using because they don’t want to go through it and all of the community groups feel like it’s a big burden with a lot of paperwork.” Plus, there’s no uniformity—every school has a different way of operating as part of it, she says.
The Ward 7 map marks 13 D.C. public schools in the ward that are currently not open to the public for recreational use versus four schools that are part of the program.
A report released earlier this month that shows health disparities by race in the District, notes that black residents represent 5 to 10 percent of the population in parts west of the Anacostia River, and more than 90 percent in neighborhoods east of the river, in Wards 7 and 8. Albersheim says she hopes that the maps will “open up the eyes” of city leaders, school principals, and others who have acknowledged that it’s unfair for people in healthier wards to have more recreational opportunities than those who suffer from more health problems.
Councilmember Allen’s legislation was introduced July 12 and is still under review by the council. If approved, the task force would submit recommendations in January 2018.
