The Albert Lea City Council rightly wants to study the integrity of Katherine Island before replacing the footbridge to it. And when the new bridge is built, all of Albert Lea will cheer.

Meanwhile, there’s one other feature of the parks system the city needs to address: Extend the sidewalk to the bridge landing.

It seems like poor planning that the existing sidewalk leads strollers to the street a few yards before they reach the popular footbridge. At some point in next fiscal year, the city should put down a few dollars to build a sidewalk along the edge of the Albert Lea Street.

And perhaps once that sidewalk is in place to Katherine Island, it would be a good set of projects over the course of the next three years to extend the sidewalks in the area so they connect. With that gap filled, people could walk from City Hall to the City Beach without having to walk in the gutters of the streets.

While we are on the topic, we would encourage the City Council to require developers to build sidewalks when constructing new developments in Albert Lea. By not requiring sidewalks, the city might as well tell its residents it wants them to be fat.

Yes, it’s true.

Study after study of city planning has shown that an environment that encourages exercise will result in healthier citizens. If Albert Lea wishes to attract medical jobs, we need to have a city with healthy living.

People who live in places with sidewalks, bike trails, parks and other public-health amenities tend to use them. People who live in places without them tend to have greater numbers of problems with obesity, according to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation and multiple other institutes.

Long ago, planners would consider environmental design to encourage public health. Those areas of Albert Lea have wonderful amenities. As the automobile changed America, planners engineered physical health out of the plan. Now the CDC, as part of its mission to improve health of Americans, has policies to encourage cities to put active living into the landscapes. No. 1 on the list is sidewalks.

We would like the City Council to heed the call of the CDC and do the same.

A sidewalk to Katherine Island would be a good start.

Requiring sidewalks for all developments would be a good follow-through.