Blue Zones and the Beach Cities

The Beach Cities are a certified Blue Zones Community, and the phrase gets used loosely enough on listing flyers that it is worth stating what it actually means. Blue Zones Project is a community well-being program that launched in the three Beach Cities in 2010, under the Beach Cities Health District, and the cities were nationally certified in 2016. The certification rests on measurable policy changes and on Gallup’s Well-Being Index, which has recorded its highest community score ever in Manhattan Beach. This page gives the numbers as the District and the cities publish them, and nothing beyond that.

What is Blue Zones Project, and how did the Beach Cities get it?

According to the Beach Cities Health District, Blue Zones Project launched here in 2010, and in 2016 Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach and Redondo Beach were named a nationally certified Blue Zones Community, at that time the largest community to achieve the certification. The City of Manhattan Beach adds that the Beach Cities were selected from more than 70 other cities as the first Blue Zones Project, by Healthways and Blue Zones, and that the effort was first branded Vitality City. The City adopted a Beach Cities Livability Plan and a South Bay Bicycle Master Plan in fall 2011 as part of it and reports $8.1 million in grant money attached to the program.

What do the numbers say?

The District’s February 2026 release on the 2025 Gallup National Health and Well-Being Index reports a Beach Cities score of 69.5 against a national score of 60.1, and a Manhattan Beach score of 71.6, which it describes as the highest ever recorded. Awareness of the District was 71 percent, up from 67 percent in 2020, and half of residents were aware of Blue Zones Project. The District’s successes page gives the earlier arc: a collective score of 68.3 in 2020, a later result of 68.0 for the Beach Cities against 58.2 nationally with Manhattan Beach at 70.6, described as the highest community measurement Gallup had recorded out of more than 1,500 community scores since the index began in 2008. That page labels the 68.0 result as 2024 in one paragraph and 2023 in another, so we cite the 2025 release for current figures.

The District’s tally since 2010: more than 24,000 Blue Zones pledges, more than 3,000 workshop completions, 77 percent of residents classified as thriving, a 42 percent decrease in smoking, a 19 percent increase in exercise and a 29 percent decline in overweight residents. Manhattan Beach’s own six-year summary reported a 25 percent decrease in obesity and overweight, a 36 percent decrease in tobacco use and a 9 percent increase in exercise. The two sets of figures cover different periods and are not directly comparable.

What changed on the ground?

The visible legacy is smoke-free policy. Manhattan Beach’s outdoor public places ordinance, 14-0008, was adopted July 18, 2014 and became enforceable August 18, 2014, and its multi-unit housing ordinance, 15-0019, adopted October 20, 2015, became enforceable May 5, 2017; the City says it partnered with the District to implement both. Hermosa Beach’s Healthy Air Hermosa ordinance, adopted August 23, 2016 and effective September 22, 2016, prohibits smoking in all outdoor public places under Chapter 8.40, with a tobacco retail license required from June 1, 2019. The District counts $8.1 million secured for livability projects alongside the smoke-free policies in all three cities.

The rest is a network of participating businesses and schools. The District lists more than 100 Blue Zones Project approved restaurants, five grocery stores committed to healthy shopping, 14 participating employers, six Blue Zones schools, 37 Walking School Bus routes and 25 percent of elementary students walking to class. The approved grocers are Boccato’s, the Green Store and Lazy Acres Market in Hermosa Beach and muun chi and Grocery Outlet in Redondo Beach. The paid side of that picture, the studios and gyms people actually join, is mapped by discipline in our guide to fitness studios in the South Bay.

What is a Moai?

The word comes from Okinawa and the program is the District’s answer to a finding in its own data: in 2023, the Gallup results showed nearly one in five Beach Cities residents reporting little or no connection to other people. Walking Moais are small groups that meet once or twice a week and walk together for at least 30 minutes; the District reports nearly 140 of them bringing together more than 1,750 people in the past year, and publishes a schedule of open groups on the Esplanade, The Strand and the piers. They are free, and the free fitness page lists the current times.

What does this mean for a buyer?

Less than the flyers suggest and more than nothing. Blue Zones certification does not change a property’s zoning, tax or value on its own. What it documents is a decade of policy that made the three cities measurably different from the county around them, in smoking rules, in walking and cycling infrastructure, and in a well-being score that has set Gallup records. Those are the things a buyer moving here from elsewhere in Los Angeles notices in the first month, and the numbers above are the honest way to describe them.

What we could not verify

Redondo Beach’s city site surfaced no page on Blue Zones or its smoke-free policy in a site-restricted search, so its ordinance is not cited here. No city documents a policy under the name complete streets; Manhattan Beach cites the Livability Plan and the Bicycle Master Plan instead. We have used no claims from Blue Zones, LLC’s own marketing. Figures checked September 16, 2026.

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