featured community spotlights
Cleveland, OH
about
The Broadway: a community on the move initiative is working to build a vibrant, healthy, family-friendly neighborhood that promotes active living. The partnership is an ambitious effort to retrofit a low-income, steel mill neighborhood for active living, provide supportive programs and encouragement to those who live and/or work there, and use all the improvements to recast the image and future of the neighborhood. Led by Slavic Village Development, a well-established non-profit community development corporation in the Broadway/ Slavic Village neighborhood, the partnership also involves leaders from a wide variety of organizations, including Cleveland Health Department (and its Steps to a Healthier Cleveland initiative), Cleveland City Planning Commission, four elementary schools (Mound, AB Hart, Willow, and Warner), Cleveland Metroparks, Clevelanders in Motion, and many more. The diverse partnership confirms that organizations not traditionally focused on health-related issues can be influential in creating environments and policies that increase opportunities for active living.
The partnership is enhancing the Broadway/Slavic Village infrastructure to better support active living by constructing an integrated, multi-purpose neighborhood trail and park network from brownfields and abandoned rail lines that link to a regional trail system; undertaking major street, bridge, and intersection improvements to promote safety; redesigning three neighborhood schools with major community input to incorporate active living; and collaborating on a citywide effort, led by the ped/bike coordinator and EcoCity Cleveland, to improve Cleveland's street design standards and educate transportation engineers about pedestrian and bicycle-friendly methods.
The partnership also has provided a range of supports to residents of all ages to increase their activity levels, such as new or expanded physical activity programs and classes in a variety of settings for multiple age groups; Safe Routes to School efforts at four K-8 schools and a Walk-to-School kit for the entire Cleveland Municipal School District; and a pilot workplace wellness program at Slavic Village Development.
Finally, the partnership has involved the community in facilitating more active living in the Broadway/ Slavic Village neighborhoods by promoting activities such as the teen mapping project, which culminated in a widely-distributed map highlighting the best places and routes for active transportation and recreation throughout the neighborhoods; community safety walks to address and reduce fear of crime; and surveys, focus groups, and preliminary message testing with help from the Health Department and Case Western Reserve University to inform a neighborhood physical activity social marketing campaign.
our story
Although quality of life improves for residents when they are physically active, neighborhood safety issues, lack of green space, and dangerous intersections often prevent people from getting exercise outside and walking or biking to neighborhood destinations. In order to respond to these challenges, Slavic Village Development (SVD) hired and trained eight neighborhood teenagers to complete walkability and bikeability audits of every street in the Broadway/ Slavic Village neighborhood. The street audits included evaluations of neighborhood sidewalks, general street conditions, crosswalks, traffic signals, and general safety. Teen mappers worked ten hours per week for nine weeks mapping the streets and entering their data on large neighborhood maps. After mapping each day, the youth returned to the SVD office, compiled their rankings, and colorcoded the streets on the maps.
Nearly 4,000 of the completed maps have been distributed at neighborhood fundraisers, meetings, festivals, and other events. The Teen Mapping project was the first of its kind in the city. Based on the success of these brightly colored maps, the Cleveland Department of Public Health is implementing a similar mapping project in each of their intervention neighborhoods through its "Steps to a Healthier Cleveland" grant.
opportunities
Broadway/Slavic Village is a relatively low income, high-crime community with the second highest incidence of heart disease of any Cleveland neighborhood. A significant portion of the working-class white majority is aging and of Czech and Polish background. Growing African-American and Latino populations make up roughly one-third of the population, and the poverty rate is 21.8%.
In addition to the community's poor health status and low income levels, the presence of crime and the perception of an unsafe environment may be the greatest barriers to active living. Other important challenges include inclement weather, overcrowded and poorly equipped schools, some unhealthy, ethnicity-specific eating traditions, and budget cuts and staff turnover at the initiative's lead agency.
Despite these challenges, the partnership has many important assets and opportunities. These include SVD's productivity, fundraising success, and community organizing experience; the consistent progress of the neighborhood trail, park and street improvements; the strength of the primary partners' ambition and commitment; the early success of the walk-to-school efforts; and recent progress of a social marketing campaign.
In the near future, the partnership will focus on facilitating biking and walking by completing construction of the 2.5-mile Morgana Run Trail, a rail-to-trail conversion; organizing workplaces and walking and biking clubs to populate the new trail and increase its safety; completing bicycle and pedestrian improvements along fleet Avenue to link multiple trails and parks; launching the neighborhood Pedestrian, Bicycle and Transit masterplan; and expanding school-based efforts in partnership with the Cleveland Department of Health. The initiative also will launch a neighborhood social marketing campaign to encourage physical activity in the neighborhood and to brand Slavic Village as a healthy community in cooperation with the Cleveland Department of Health, Steps to a Healthier Cleveland, and ParkWorks. This campaign will serve as a model for other neighborhoods throughout Cleveland.
accomplishments
In Action
