Healthy community design is planning and designing communities that make it easier for people to live healthy lives.[1] Healthy community design offers important benefits:[citation needed]
- Decreases dependence on the automobile by building homes, businesses, schools, churches and parks closer to each other so that people can more easily walk or bike between them.
- Provides opportunities for people to be physically active and socially engaged as part of their daily routine, improving the physical and mental health of its citizens.
- Allows persons, if they choose, to age in place and remain all their lives in a community that reflects their changing lifestyles and changing physical capabilities.
- ^ "Healthy Community Design" (PDF). U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Environmental Health. 2008.