Culture
The Cheap, Colorful Way Cities Are Trying to Fight Childhood Obesity
Playground designers are hoping kids will hopscotch their way to fitness—but it might not work quite that way.
The U.S. has a well-known childhood obesity problem. According to the CDC, more than one third of the nation's children and adolescents were overweight or obese in 2012. The percentage of obese children 6 to 11 years old more than doubled over the past three decades, from 7 percent in 1980 to 18 percent in 2012.
But some cities, designers, and child-health advocates think they have a solution—at least a small part of a solution. And the best news for cash-strapped schools and governments is that the solution is cheap.