public health

When Black and Brown cyclists need safety from more than traffic

Unsafe streets and poor health outcomes are two of the biggest challenges facing residents in Chicago’s low-to-moderate income communities. Launched in 2011, the city’s PlayStreets program addresses both issues by creating car-free spaces for healthy recreation, which also supports crime-prevention efforts. Last year over 26,000 people participated in 140 block party-style events.

Were you dismayed in 2006, when the city sold the naming rights to the Millennium Park bike station to McDonald’s? Then you’ll be glad to hear that Divvy’s new sponsor is a company that promotes health, rather than undermines it. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois, the state’s largest health insurer, has inked a five-year, $12.5 million sponsorship contract to support the bike-share system, as well as other cycling initiatives.

A lot of research has shown a link between living in a walkable community, active transportation habits, and better health outcomes.

When cars first became a common presence in American cities, doctors were shocked by the carnage. In 1925, editors of the New England Journal of Medicine called the bloodshed caused by motorists "appalling" and lamented children's loss of life as "a massacre of the innocent." The sense of urgency was still detectable a few decades later. In a 1957 report, Harvard researchers called the public health threat posed by automobiles a “mass disease of epidemic proportions.”

This is an excerpt from "Bikenomics: How Bicycling Can Save the Economy," by Elly Blue (Microcosm Publishing, December 1, 2013, bikenomics.com). See our interview with Elly from spring 2013.