Mark Fenton, champion racewalker and national health advocate, scopes the corner of 900 South and 900 East in Salt Lake City wearing hiking gear and firing shots with his digital camera.

He's hunting for signs of walkable design and looking for weaknesses.

He would prefer to see a roundabout and back-in angled parking, but he likes the wide sidewalks, protruding curbs, bike racks, median landscaping and lime-green benches. And he probably will report to the City Council on Thursday that these elements should be found in areas besides hip commercial districts.

"Bike parking shouldn't be a cute commodity in a neighborhood like this," Fenton says. "It should be integrated into the entire community."

Fenton is in Salt Lake City this week for the Utah League of Cities and Towns' 100th convention. He is leading municipal officials from across the state on morning strolls and through urban-design workshops. He also is doing walkability assessments for Salt Lake City and Centerville.

"He's more than a walker," says Brian Hall, ULCT's training director. "We're getting him here for the side of him that is focused on creating healthy, active communit- ies."

In the 1980s, Fenton, 46, was a member of the U.S. racewalking team. He also is a mechanical engineer who studied walkers' strides at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and helped Reebok fine-tune its sneakers in a high-tech lab.

An author and former host of the PBS series "America's Walking," Fenton has become a walking celebrity. He even coached Morgan Spurlock on how to be slothful enough to pile on fast-food pounds in the 2004 documentary "Super Size Me."

But nowadays, Fenton's work focuses less on biomechanics and more on creating environments where people feel comfortable walking or cycling. He hopes it will be easy enough that they will live healthier lives.

"We need to recalibrate our thinking and really realize [the obesity epidemic is] a mechanic of physical inactivity and poor nutrition," says Fenton, noting that the lack of exercise also has spawned higher rates of diabetes, heart disease and osteoporosis.

"We know how to build communities where people will intrinsically be more active."

Salt Lake City, he adds, has improved since he frequented it in the 1990s for the Outdoor Retailer show. (He was editor of Walking magazine and a Reebok rep). Before light rail, new bike lanes and those pedestrian-friendly orange flags, he gave the city a "D" for healthy design.

Now it gets a "C+." (But he gives 9th and 9th an A-.)

To get an "A" overall, cities must have an integrated mix of land uses (residential blended with commercial, office and public space); a strong network of trails, bike lanes, mass transit and roads; site design that attracts and engages pedestrians; and safety measures that protect walkers and cyclists.

Fenton, a planning board member in his hometown of Scituate, Mass., has a variety of tips for making cities more walkable. He promotes developing a comprehensive "safe-routes-to-school" plan or tackling a single thoroughfare to make it a "complete street," meaning it has room for pedestrians, cyclists, transit and cars.

His kids - Skye, 9, and Max, 11 - belong to a "walking school bus." Parents from six families take turns each day walking the kids to their elementary school.

Salt Lake City Councilwoman Jill Remington Love invited Fenton to speak to the council Thursday.

"I'm hoping we can learn from him," she says. "He is well known in the walking community as sort of an exercise guru, but he also talks about the design of communities. . . . We value that. We want to be pedestrian- friendly."

rwinters@sltrib.com