Links > Planning, Policy and Investing in Active Communities

This section links you to useful resources on this topic on external websites.

• Active Living Essentials: Rural Communities: This Active Living by Design website is focused on increasing physical activity through community design. This particular section focuses on rural communities.

• AdvantAge Initiative: This initiative outlines the elements of an elder-friendly community.

• Alberta Active Communities:
  This Alberta Recreation and Parks Association (ARPA) initiative is designed to “strengthen leadership capacity to build creative, healthier and more active communities through recreation and parks.”

• Alberta Recreation and Parks Association: ARPA has many resources to help develop parks and recreation opportunities in your community.

• Canadian Rural Partnership Asset Mapping: A Handbook: This Handbook will help you organize and work through an asset-mapping exercise in your community.

• Healthy Rural Communities: A Resource and Action Guide for North Carolina: This guidebook is a resource for community leaders of all kinds. The guidebook will help decision-makers make tough, complex (and smart) growth and development decisions.

• International Charter for Walking: This charter gives communities the chance to encourage decision-makers to formally commit to creating a community that encourages people to be active. Use it as is or as a guideline for your work.

• Leadership for Healthy Communities: This American organization supports local policy-makers in creating healthier communities. The eight-page guide, Increasing Active Living: A Guide for Policy Makers, is not specific to rural or older adults but is a very good resource for all decision-makers.

• Making Your Community Age Friendly: Planning for Action: This document is the third section from a larger guide called Age Friendly Rural and Remote Communities: A Guide. The Guide includes suggestions and a checklist to help make your community age friendly.

• Physical Activity Backgrounder for Decision-Makers: This backgrounder from the Alberta Centre for Active Living gives you information about the costs of physical inactivity and what community decision-makers can do to promote physical activity.

• Senior Friendly: This program helps communities, businesses and organizations provide services that meet the needs of the aging population.

• Toolkit for Influencing Physical Activity Policy: This Toolkit is a basic guide for practitioners and decision-makers in all communities.