Make Streets Safe and More Accessible for Poor, People of Color, Disabled, and Kids

Copyright

2016

In the San Joaquin Valley of California, where one in three children are overweight, Latina women started walking groups to improve their families’ health. When local officials said it would cost too much to build walking trails, they enlisted their construction-worker husbands to do it. The next step is for the community to understand how to make walking safer and more comfortable, says Genoveva Islas of the grassroots group Cultiva La Salud (“Cultivating Health”). They are now studying how traffic calming, bike lanes and sidewalk networks can improve their lives.