CHESAPEAKE -- Decades of car-dependant living is hurting our health, reducing the amount of exercise we get.

Walking remains the cheapest form of transportation and exercise, but living in a walkable community is almost a dying art.

Some developers, planners, and health advocates are trying to reverse the trend by building walkable communities.

Janene Smith works at Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority in downtown Norfolk, lives in downtown Portsmouth, and says she’s lost 40 pounds walking.

“My friends in suburbia, they are missing out because they have to get in their car or catch the bus to get where they need to go,” she said.

The trouble is, much of the country was designed around cars, not people. Sidewalks suddenly vanish, it’s safer to drive than walk, and destinations are too far from home.

Dan Burden of Walkable Cities, Inc. says this has impacted people negatively. “All of these losses of ability to walk and go places is what’s led to the fact that people are getting fatter and less healthy.”

Burden was in Chesapeake speaking to the Environmental Improvement Council, and his arrival in town sets a new record among the 2,800 cities he’s visited.

“It took me 14 minutes from the time I left the airport until I saw the first human being, driving in the car,” said the urban designer. “That’s the indication that we’re very lost right now.”

However, the nationally recognized authority of biking and walking in communities says there's hope.

"With just a little bit of work, the next round of village making we would call it can be very walkable.”

Walkable cities, Burden says, reduce transpiration costs and health care costs and are not only good for health, they're good business.

"If you design cities around people, not only is it more affordable scale to build to, those cities over time are going to make far, far more money than cities built to the car."