Overview:
Canadian Affairs has been taking a critical look at five Canadian cities to see how they stack up as Blue Zones. Simply put, Blue Zones are places where people eat simple food, move a lot during their days and live close to loved ones with whom they eat, laugh and perhaps pray.
Toronto already is a Blue Zone.
Well, the rich neighbourhoods are anyway, Gil Penalosa clarifies. Penalosa is an urbanist, a city planner, a former Toronto mayoral candidate and a loud, supportive voice for healthy cities. He’s also the founder of 8/80 Cities, an agency that advocates for healthy cities for everyone, from eight year olds to 80 year olds.
“You go to the Annex, you go to Rosedale. I think the people in the Annex or in Roncesvalles, they do everything of the Blue Zones. I think they eat a lot more vegetables, they eat little meat,” Penalosa said in an interview to talk about what Toronto has in common with Blue Zones. Blue Zones are five locations around the world where many people live to 100 and are healthy until the end.
“I’m pretty sure they walk even though they have cars in the Annex. Or 90 per cent of the people walk. Also they socialize, there’s lots of clubs, and lots of their churches are very active,” Penalosa said, continuing on with several of the qualities that make up a Blue Zone.
There’s not so much Blue Zone in lower income areas. “The only thing Rexdale and Rosedale have in common is they both start with an R,” he said.
The original Blue Zones were discovered by Dan Buettner, an adventurer and explorer for National Geographic. The zones are vastly different from one another in many ways including locale: sites in Italy; Greece; Japan; Costa Rica; and California. But they have one very important thing in common: their environments make it easier for the inhabitants to make healthy choices than unhealthy choices. Some because of remoteness, some due to lack of choice, one because of religion.
Basic principles that bond the five regions include eating lots of vegetables and little meat, having movement embedded in their daily routines, having a purpose in life and living close to friends and family with whom they eat meals, have fun, laugh a lot and sometimes pray.
Public health workers know that in much of the world, certainly in North America, people know the healthy choices they should make. They just don’t make them. With fries please — and gravy — instead of the salad. I’ll just grab a cab instead of walking or riding my bike. I just got a great deal on a streaming service instead of hanging out with friends.
Penalosa, who has worked in and advised more than 350 cities around the world, knows Buettner. He knew him 15 years ago when, Penalosa says, the man was an idealist. Now he’s turned Blue Zones into a commercial enterprise, selling his services and the services of various groups he works with to help municipalities adopt the qualities of a Blue Zone.
Since I started looking at Canadian cities through the Blue Zone lens, my inbox has been swamped with offers of books, cookbooks and workshops. All the hoopla flies in the face of a basic concept of Blue Zones. Simplify things. Simplify life. Fewer choices, but better ones.
Penalosa agrees simplicity is key. He has his own list of elements that make cities healthy. They’re not Blue Zone elements, but not dissimilar.
There are five:
- Eat healthier, more vegetables, less meat;
- Have more daily physical activity; not running marathons or playing tennis on the weekend, but walking and cycling to work or to run errands;
- Socialize;
- Sleep seven to eight hours every night;
- Connect with nature.
Let’s look at connecting with nature. Toronto has 28 per cent tree canopy. You know, the lovely tree-lined streets, where majestic maples or towering oaks shade the streets. Well, 28 per cent is an average. Actually, rich neighbourhoods hover around 50 per cent tree canopy; in poor neighbourhoods it’s as low as five percent, Penalosa says.
You can’t grow an urban forest overnight. But you can create more parks.
“Everyone should have a park within four blocks of their home,” Penalosa says. “Everybody should have a park or a green area… If they go to a park and there are benches and tables they’re going to be able to socialize, if there are farmers’ markets, if the city is investing in programs” in their parks.
Now let’s look at embedding exercise in everyday life.
“If we want large segments of the population to exercise, the only way is to walk and bike. So we need to make walking and cycling safe and enjoyable,” Penalosa says. “And it is not in some neighbourhoods.
“In the Annex or Roncy, it is very safe to walk or to bike. The speed limit in all of these areas is 30 kilometres an hour. And people obey. Why do they obey? Because they have humps,” he said, referring to traffic calming measures.
And sidewalks. People are not going to walk if they don’t feel safe, and they won’t feel safe without sidewalks. Twenty-four per cent of Toronto neighbourhoods — that’s one in four, according to the city’s data, says Penalosa — do not have sidewalks. Care to venture a guess as to which ones are lacking?
“I do think that the wealthy neighbourhoods of Toronto, and I think most cities in Canada, in their wealthy neighbourhoods, are Blue Zones. The low income, the poor neighbourhoods are not,” Penalosa said.
“And to be a Blue Zone, really a Blue Zone, we need both. We need the personal desire to do it, and we also need the cities to help.”
Editor’s Note: This article was corrected to say Toronto’s tree canopy is 28 per cent.
