Planning for Active Living: Should We Support a New Moral Environmentalism?

Abstract

In recent years, planning and public health have rebuilt interdisciplinary linkages. Programs to promote physical activity and fight obesity by modifying the built environment are now emerging throughout the US and Europe. This article seeks to engage the planning profession in a collective reflection about the ethical meaning and implications of the ‘active living’ agenda. It builds on a historical comparison between the American 19th century sanitation movement and this new agenda. Striking similarities emerge. While they both represent genuine efforts to foster health-supportive environments, they also rely on similar and problematic environmental determinism and positive modernism assumptions, and imply moral and disciplinary control goals. It is argued that environmental and sustainability arguments are ethically superior and more compatible with the American planners' code of ethics than the public health rationale for planning for physically active lifestyles.