Health

Health - Appropriate town planning and investments can encourage citizens to lead a more active life.

The Greens believe that quality of life in a city is directly linked to the level of activity of its citizens. We promote active leisure and sport and outdoor events such as mass runs and mass cycling events known as “critical mass”. Encouraging participation in sport and physical activity through such events does not require the building of large and expensive national stadiums – all that’s needed is a positive and sensible attitude from the local government and the opening up of city spaces, including parks and streets.

We need to become more active – obesity among Europeans is on the rise despite many people improving their diets. This unfortunate trend (between 1996 and 2002 the average European put on 1 to 2 kilograms in weight) is mainly the effect of decreasing levels of physical activity. That is why the city authorities, through appropriate planning and investments, can and should encourage citizens to undertake more exercise, whilst taking into consideration the varying needs of different generations and social groups: older people, women, children and people with special needs. We would require fewer hospital beds as a result.

As proponents of healthy lifestyles, the Greens are in favour of introducing smoking bans in public places and in the workplace, as in our opinion, a person’s personal space ends where the personal space of the next person – the non-smoker, begins. In the European Union, 730 thousand people die every year as a result of smoking, 80 thousand of these are passive smokers. A total ban on smoking in public places has been introduced in: Ireland, Italy, Malta, Norway, Sweden, Scotland and France, among others; it’s now time to widen the ban to the entire European Union.

You Can Do It!

 * find out whether your city is a member of the European Healthy Cities network and what actions it is undertaking to improve the health of its citizens.
 * “more parks, fewer car parks” - check the city’s spending on the development of parks, free-access sports fields, sports centres and swimming pools and compare this to the amount invested in road construction and car parks.