Can physical activity really bring us together?
The third in a series of articles on physical activity, public health, and community - and why the answer is more complicated than advocates would have you believe
This is the third and final instalment in a series looking at the role of physical activity in public health, sport, and community connectedness — themes I explored in a session delivered to Western Sydney Moving in February 2026. The first two pieces covered physical activity and public health, and sport. If you haven’t read those yet, you can find them here
. This final piece turns to community connectedness — and ends, I promise, somewhere more optimistic than it begins.
The case for physical activity as social glue
The connection between physical activity and social connectedness is, from a historical perspective at least, hard to dispute. The development of public parks in England’s industrial cities was built on the premise that being active in green space alongside your neighbours was good not just for health, but for humanity. Whether physical activity remains the best vehicle for connecting communities in 2026, however, is a different question.
Technology is reshaping how we connect with one another. As populations expand, communities are pushed further from city centres into new towns and suburbs that offer more space and, in many cases, more affordable housing. Sydney is a useful illustration. The cost of living on the eastern seaboard has placed it beyond the reach of most, and the response — a plan for three cities, the second and third being built to the west of the Opera House — means that tens of thousands of people now live in areas where the supporting infrastructure is playing catch-up. The same was true in England when the industrial cities were cleared, and overflow towns created on their outskirts.
The development of housing estates and new suburbs removed from cities with well-established parkland amenity means that meeting up, in a physical sense, has become harder unless people are willing to travel. Extensive travel to enjoy leisure time is, of course, something groups most likely to benefit from being physically active rarely have the luxury of.
The online environment however is a different matter. Computer games, social media, and virtual worlds have removed geographical barriers that access to green space cannot, despite the best efforts of government to create 15 minute cities. At the population level, we are arguably better connected than at any point in human history — we have technology, not the local park, to thank for it.
When we do come together, it isn’t always harmonious?
You may argue, reasonably, that the explosion in digital connection is precisely why loneliness and a sense of isolation is growing. That may well be true. But even when we do come together to be physically active, it would be optimistic to suggest the result is always harmonious between the disparate groups clambering for access to facilities and infrastructure.
Sporting teams competing for the same patch of grass is hardly a new phenomenon. A recent report in the Sydney Morning Herald highlighted a dispute over access agreements for a new sporting field in Wentworth — the sort of conflict that plays out in local councils across the country with a regularity that rarely makes the news. Cyclists bemoan sharing paths with pedestrians; pedestrians have begun to direct their frustration at e-bike riders on footpaths (on this I tend to agree). Even Park Run — one of the great success stories of grassroots participation — is not universally welcomed by those whose regular walking route is swallowed up by enthusiastic runners on a Saturday morning.
In my hometown of Widnes, the Park Run route winds around a small lake along a path narrow enough that it becomes all but inaccessible to anyone else for the duration of the event. This might seem a small grievance, but if you are not a runner, and that lake is one of the only large areas of blue space within reach, you could be forgiven for feeling that a movement celebrated for its inclusivity is, for an hour each week, anything but.
Physical activity as social glue works best when there is enough space for everyone. In many communities, there simply isn’t enough to satisfy a growing demand.
So where does this leave us?
If physical activity struggles to find its question in public health, sport, or social connectedness, what should those who advocate for it be doing? I would suggest three things.
Open the doors
Most community sport and leisure facilities remain closed unless you pay to use them. This is particularly frustrating given it is often these very facilities — the ones charging admission — that have invested in the most accessible and inclusive amenities: feeding rooms, family changing, and accessible bathrooms. These are precisely the facilities that would benefit the groups most likely to benefit from more access to opportunities to be physically active. So why do we insist on placing them behind a paywall?
How many more people might be encouraged to walk, cycle, or run if they knew a clean and accessible bathroom was available at the start or end of their session? My guess is quite a few. It would certainly not reduce the number of people being active.
Make the changing and amenity facilities in all publicly funded sport and leisure facilities open to the public, free of charge.
The same logic applies to outdoor facilities gifted to clubs and fenced off to protect the surface. Organisations that benefit from this public investment should be required to open the gates at least once a week for free, unstructured use. If clubs are concerned about vandalism, volunteers can staff and supervise the session. If we want investment in facilities to deliver the community benefit that governing bodies have promised, we need to find a way to make them accessible to everyone — at least some of the time.
All publicly funded facilities should open to the public for free use at least once a week, with this forming part of any lease agreed with the host organisation.
Pass the pub test
If physical activity were as beneficial or as popular as its advocates suggest, it really ought to have had a more measurable impact on public health in the fifty years since it became a policy priority. It is hard, I know, to look beyond the good news stories when you are invested in a cause. But it is precisely the sceptic — the person not yet convinced — who holds the key to new sources of funding and ideas that may advance knowledge in the field.
Recent attempts to quantify the economic value of physical activity have produced figures so large they lack credibility when viewed though a common sense lens. Reports with eye-watering headline numbers tend to reinforce the suspicion of the unconvinced rather than resolve it. A better approach is to focus on qualitative outcomes: the benefit delivered at the local, human level. Initiatives that have opened school playgrounds to the community after hours, for instance, have produced results that are tangible to anyone who lives nearby. People are far more likely to support that kind of work than a report quantifying its using some advance statistic technique that produces an arbitrary dollar value.
Focus on local interventions with a tangible impact on the lived experience of those most likely to benefit.
A grassroots movement, led from the ground up
Physical activity, as a movement, has become too academic. Its prescription is debated at conferences, in journals, and at strategic meetings removed from the communities most likely to benefit. This is not where change happens.
The success of the Victorian public parks built in the nineteenth century was not that they were designed using robust scientific inquiry or part of a national strategic initiative. They worked because they met a community need: a safe, accessible place to come together in nature. That remains the blueprint for any successful participation initiative. It begins with a groundswell of support from those who stand to benefit, driven by leaders within the community who are themselves already part of it.
When the City of Liverpool purchased Sefton Park, it did not keep the gates closed until a participation strategy had been agreed. The activities that have taken root there were built from the ground up — exactly as they should be. Government and NGOs would do well to remember that their most useful role is often to create the conditions for this to happen, then step back.
Create the environment and facilities where communities can come together safely, then let them decide how they want to be active.
None of this is to say that physical activity lacks value. It clearly does not. But its advocates have sometimes done it a disservice by overpromising and under-delivering at scale.
The most credible case for physical activity is not the one made in a conference hall — it is the one made on a Tuesday evening when a community has turned up, of its own accord, to use a space that is open, free, and built with them in mind.
That is something I think most people would get behind.