I have one of those "good ole days" stories as I think about this issue of Northwest Public Health, but first something about the here and now. My wife and I are just completing a total transformation of our yard in Seattle. We have a fairly typical house for our in-city neighborhood, built in 1908 on a postage-stamp lot. It looks pretty much the same as the photo from the 1930s we got from the county land use office. There was nothing particularly wrong with our yard, although the grass had long since morphed into weeds, and the steep front slope continued to get steeper with erosion. Yet, as each Seattle summer came, with its evenings warmed by a sun that seems reluctant to set even at 10:00 p.m., we felt we w ere missing some wholesome experience by not having a place to enjoy that twilight. Now we do, with a Montana slate patio strategically placed to capture every last solar ray.

Why would we go to this expense (dirt and rocks aren't cheap!), even as we lament the state of our retirement accounts and debate whether we should sell our home of 18 years to beat a feared drop in the real estate market? For me the answer is simple: My yard is where I recharge from the hassles and drains of professional life, where I fuss over the first flowers of pepper plants and admire the miracle of my brewing compost. The more time I spend there, the more grounded, energized, and healthy I feel.

Now for the good old days. I did a lot of walking and bike riding where I grew up in a neighborhood north of Milwaukee that was prototypical of the 1950 suburban ideal—ranch-style houses and large, fertilized lawns set on wide streets. There were no sidewalks, but not much traffic either. I walked or rode to the schools I attended or to the store to buy my baseball cards, and played football, basketball, and baseball on playgrounds and fields all within a few blocks of my home. Television wasn't much of a distraction yet (we didn't have one until I was six), and no computer screen beckoned with flashing, fast-moving adventure games or real-time messaging with my buddies. My family ate a lot of fresh food…heck, there was still a farm with cornfields behind our house (now, of course, condos).

How many of us can claim a similar situation today? Parents schlep carloads of kids to schools and recreation facilities miles from home, lack of sidewalks means danger in our car-obsessed society, and good food is hard to find or expensive. The whole family is drawn to the computer—to access the incredible wealth of information on the Internet or just to manage the piles of e-mail—and to the TV for "reality" shows and on-demand movies. We sit a lot more now.

For the first public health advocate in my life, my mother, promoting healthy behavior was as easy as saying, "Go out and play!" Today, the challenges are much greater and larger than the capacity of most families to overcome themselves, so community-wide approaches are necessary. And, that's the focus of this issue of the journal. From our interview with Howard Frumkin to the stories of health-promoting community planning in Oregon (Duckart), Washington (Abad), and Montana (Burk), from a call for more "daylighting" in building design (Loveland) to a case for the therapeutic nature of landscapes (Winterbottom), you will find well-supported articles that outline how we can and must do more to improve the built environments that promote health.

I trust you will find this issue of Northwest Public Health interesting and useful. As always, we welcome and encourage your comments.

Aaron Katz, Editor-in-Chief
Director, UW Post-Program Initiatives