Every planner owns a vested interest in the question, and especially in the answer.
It means intimate contact with ordinary landscape, even intimate contact with the wilderness of mountain meadows or sandy beaches. And it means something disappearing from contemporary American life. Behind arguments concerning subdivision guidelines, downtown revitalization, ecological imperatives and other important issues snuffles something equally important but often offensive, certainly distasteful, always unnerving to scholar and planner alike. Even the Centers for Disease Control, a federal institution increasingly worried about the inactivity and obesity of the American public, and especially the young public, has sounded the alarm. Sitting in front of video screens at work and at home produces overweight people headed for significant medical trouble, as the President's Council now warns in its press releases.