College of Architecture and Planning University of Colorado Denver

LiveWell Globeville Elyria Swansea is a community-based initiative to increase healthy eating and active living in Denver’s Globeville, Elyria, and Swansea neighborhoods. The seven-year initiative seeks to build and sustain a movement towards sustainable healthy and active communities by focusing on policy, the built environment and lifestyle changes. 

Environmental factors, not personal choice, are the greatest obstacles to healthy eating and active living in Globeville, Elyria and Swansea. By mobilizing and empowering the community to create and implement its vision, all those who live, work, study, and play in Globeville, Elyria and Swansea can enjoy the benefits of a community that promotes and sustains healthy and active lifestyles.

How We Are Different

Residents – both individually and collectively – have a history of successful community organizing that has led to environmental and policy change in these neighborhoods. This initiative seeks to formalize a social infrastructure from which such community organizing efforts may be continued and sustained, in order to implement the community’s vision for an environment that is more supportive of healthy and active lifestyles. 

In 2011-2012, a resident-based community council will develop a community-supported strategic plan for healthy eating and active living, so that the people most impacted by these efforts have an ownership stake and a leadership role in the movement. The plan will provide a framework, vision and direction for developing a more sustainable community that supports healthy and active lifestyles for all of those who live, work, study and play in Globeville, Elyria, and Swansea. This community buy-in and investment will ensure that the efforts are successful and sustainable. 

Our Impact