There are many reasons why fast food doesn’t jive with a CoolTown, and here’s a whole book of them.  Below are listed just a few:

Health:  As covered in this particular week’s blog, there are many ways town planning can promote health, and avoiding these is one of them.

Local economy:  I’ve got an upcoming week’s blog on this, but fast food chains simply take more money out of the local economy than local entrepreneurs.  The National Main Street Center is the best resource on

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Here are the health-oriented town features that investors are implementing in the CoolTown model.

1. Genuine walkability.  I mean ‘genuine’ in that people will actually want to walk to destinations, rather than it being a theoretical possibility.  I see the word often abused as such.  Few people enjoy walking across parking lots, especially at night.
2. Enough fast food joints!  If you read the book Fast Food Nation you may never eat at one again.  You’ll see a lot more local businesses that

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What’s a typical week in a health-oriented town?There really is such a thing, in my opinion.  Once I got ‘urban dress/walking shoes’, I found myself getting twice as much exercise.

Go to Nike and look up “prestos”.  My shoe expert of a friend recommended I get these when I asked him if there was such a thing as shoes I could go to a meeting with, and run in.  Well, for my sake, these shoes are just that!  Not only do I wear these to business meetings, but I ran a ten mile race in them too! 

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How do you know you’re in a healthy town?  Just walk around and look.  For some reason, the people at suburban Walmarts just don’t seem nearly as fit as those strolling through city downtowns.

Here’s my list of choices in a typical week:  Less than one block away:  Pick-up basketball games, throwing a frisbee, running up and down stairs, jogging to the grocery or drugstore.  Just a few blocks away:  Walking to the subway, yoga, salsa dancing, jogging to my gym and more pick-up basketball (or

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This week The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is sponsoring The Shape We’re In, focusing on why nearly two-thirds of Americans are out of shape.

The series kicks off with Experts plotting America’s new diet: Less sprawl, less fat, less frenzy. From the article:  “Right now, 75 percent of all trips less than a mile are taken by car. About 25 percent of people are physically active. Another 50 percent do a little activity. And 25 percent do virtually nothing.“

Here’s my take on it.  If you’ve

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