Better Philadelphia Challenge

Four former classmates and I entered the Better Philadelphia Challenge in October 2015. This year the challenge was to imagine a healthy future for the greater Belmont/Mantua neighborhood, specifically answering the question:

As part of this neighborhood's development, what physical design interventions could encourage healthy and active lifestyles, thereby improving public health among residents?

After exploring the neighborhood and talking to residents our team observed that there are already so many people--residents and non-residents--working hard to make the community better. There are programs to address nutrition, physical health, mental health, financial health and more, but these programs are not living up to their potential.

Rather that create a physical design to sit alongside these many existing solutions, we chose to address what we saw as the real barrier to healthy, active lifestyles: trust and communication between community members and the people trying to serve them. In addition to building trust, we also developed an awareness campaign to make sure everyone in the community knew about and had access to the many helpful services that already exist.

See our entry by clicking the image above, or clicking here