| Summary: | The aim of this study is to investigate where and why the fitness clubs, Sats and Friskis & Svettis in Stockholms county, choose to locate their facilities in certain places and which their primarily targetgroups are. Furthermore, the aim is to gain knowledge of people’s health status in areas where the facilities are located, in order to see if they are located where exercise is most needed. Interviews were conducted with members of the fitness clubs but also with non members, i.e. people who lived in areas with an absence of fitness facilities. Further interviews have been made with managers of the fitness clubs and with two political representatives. The other methods were mapping of the facilities inrelationship to different variables in ArcGIS and field observations. The results of this study show thatthe facilities are mostly located in the central of Stockholm and places where income levels,population density and amount of people working in an area are high. The facilities can also be foundwhere there are large flows of people, for example near commercial centers such as shopping malls.The fitness clubs do not primarily focus on establishing any facilities in places where exercise is mostneeded. The target groups for Friskis & Svettis were both younger and older people and those who wanted to pay a low membership fee while Sats target groups were people aged between 20-50 years and were willing to pay a high price for a membership. Based on price for a membership, availability and what the clubs offers, some people may get excluded from Sats and Friskis & Svettis. Those people mostly live in low status areas and if they eventually would become members of the clubs it would require cheap prices, culture-specific exercise forms and better proximity between the residenceand the facility. Finally, since both the fitness clubs and the political representative’s claims that people everywhere should have the possibility to exercise regardless of their income level and so on, there should be a better interaction between all the actors in order for the clubs to be available to allthe people.
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