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Does Sprawl Make Us Fat?
Ant writes "A Science News article talks about the relationship between city design and health. New cross-disciplinary research is exploring whether urban sprawl makes us soft, or whether people who don't like to exercise move to the sprawling suburbs, or some combination of both." From the article: "So far, the dozen strong studies that have probed the relationships among the urban environment, people's activity, and obesity have all agreed, says Ewing. 'Sprawling places have heavier people... There is evidence of an association between the built environment and obesity.' ... However, University of Toronto economist Matthew Turner charges that 'a lot of people out there don't like urban sprawl, and those people are trying to hijack the obesity epidemic to further the smart-growth agenda [and] change how cities look.' ... 'We're the only ones that have tried to distinguish between causation and sorting... and we find that it's sorting,' [says Turner]. 'The available facts do not support the conclusion that sprawling neighborhoods cause weight gain.'"
The objections quoted in TFS are debunked quite well in the linked science article. Additionally, research earlier this year shows teenagers living in sprawling suburbs were more than twice as likely to be overweight as teens in more compact urban areas
;-)
These kids have never moved, never had a choice about where they live and are still much fatter.
It's a no brainer really. Less walking opportunities = less energy expenditure = more stored energy (as well as eating crap on those long, boring car journeys to work/school to save on cooking time at home so you can sit in front of the idiot box).
Anyway, the failure of town planners is going to work out by itself in the end. As oil prices skyrocket & people in the suburbs grow fatter, the solution become obvious. Liposuction clinics combined with gas stations
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Let me try to sort this out:
YES, not having to walk around very much will make it more likely you won't get the exercise necessary not to be fat.
NO, it does not "cause" it (in the sense they want you to take it); you can still make the choice to exercise on your own, irrespective of how much you need to walk in a day for other purposes.
YES, there's probably a correlation between "how much people in this city have to walk" and "how fat they generally are" that persists after the appropriate controls.
NO, that's a bad, ad-hoc reason to fix urban sprawl. Urban sprawl is bad because it leads to time-wasting congestion and forces people to have to use cars, which sucks for anyone who can't or doesn't like to drive, and exposes people to the risk of energy price fluctuations unnecessarily. It also contributes to pollution. There, I just made a strong case why sprawl is bad, without resorting to being a health Nazi.
I'd like to plug my latest joural entry, which describes a way cities could transition gradually to less sprawl, without tedious regulation, government-run services, and invasive control over people's lives. In short: put up tolls heavy enough to clear congestion. This creates the financial incentives necessary for market-driven mass transit, which in turn makes denser development more economical and desirable to live in.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Not to mention stupid.
I know some very intelligent, down-to-earth city folk, but I swear most of them live just outside the realm of reality.
Ration Book.
So far, the dozen strong studies that have probed the relationships among the urban environment, people's activity, and obesity have all agreed, says Ewing. 'Sprawling places have heavier people...
Ah, a positive correlation between urban sprawl and gluteal sprawl. I wonder what the formula for that would look like.
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Fat, yes. Not to mention stupid. I know some very intelligent, down-to-earth city folk, but I swear most of them live just outside the realm of reality.
Yeah, well, not all of us were able to get into Costco law school like you and your elite friends.
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if the distances are not practically tractable on foot, people will use cars more often than their feet.
you use cars and you move less with your body.. you get fat..
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Research by a guy named Ewing. Could we call this the Ewing Theory?
Put treadmills in the doorways of all the McDonalds. The treadmill won't shut off until you've burned up all the calories you just ate. On top of prices they can list minutes required on the menu to burn off the calories. Instead of worrying about calories people will worry if they have the time to eat a large fries.
Sprawl didn't make me fat. Eating more calories than I burn made me fat.
"It's too bad stupidity isn't painful." - A. S. LaVey
I used to live in downtown Seattle and didn't own a car. I walked a ~1 mile to the nearest Safeway and 5 blocks to my bus stop. Plus there were walks to restaurants or the mall. If you have that kind of lifestyle, it's pretty hard to become obese unless you really, really try. Furthermore, suburbanites usually commute quite a ways to work. Depending on where you live, this commute can take a substantial chunk out of your day. This lost time means a.)you're more likely to eat a quick, unhealthy meal b.)find less time to exercise. Granted, some people still wouldn't do a and b, but wasting time in traffic sure eats away at your free time. I personally think suburbs are, on the whole, one of the worst creations in the US. You can trace so many problems to them. And if you look at satellite images - especially of California towns - you can see how they keep cramming the new houses closer and closer together. Who the hell needs a real backyard anyway?
Nope, suburbanization is only a symptom. Automobiles and poor diet are the root cause of the recent trend toward obesity. They work most effectively when combined for a quick trip through the drive-through of the local burger joint. The widespread adoption of automobiles following World War Two allowed developers to build large suburban housing tracts that would have been far to isolated if the population had to rely on lengthy trips by public transportation. Once people moved into suburbia, they were too isolated from traditional shopping streets in the heart of cities and towns. As a result, suburban shopping malls (most easily accessed by car) sprang up across North America. Those eventually devolved into the "big box" retail concept, in which it is often impractical to walk between shops in the same shopping center because of the mammoth parking lots.
In many sprawling communities, walking past the driveway/subdivision is asking to die.
That's not hyperbole, but a basic consequence of planning that is downright hostile to anyone who isn't behind the wheel of a car. I don't believe cars should be eliminated, but car-dependance is a truly awful thing that I'm glad that I've been able to break free of...but I don't know for how long. The attitude of the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority isn't friendly to mass transit. In the words of their last General Manager "the automobile won" and light rail is obsolete. Buses are the future, apparently. In the last few decades, automobile registrations in Boston have tripled as rail lines have been shut down or cut back dramatically in favor of surprise bustitution that suddenly becomes permanent.
It's depressing enough to see a new cookie-cutter car-dependant community rise up where a forest used to be, but it's even worse when a city with an excellent transit system that encourages people to ride the train then walk decides that it wants to be just like PinePointeAutumnPreserveRegistryReserveGrove Habitation Area #49485776893-B and compel people to pick up the bad habits of the suburbs.
that and civic design. Here in Houston I challenge you to ride a bike from point A to point B. There are no sidewalks, no back roads that go through, no bike lanes, what bike lanes that do exist are right next to fast moving over sized commercial loads that reguard that as a "vehicle sprawl" lane. Figure in unstable buisness environments that virtually guarantee that if you move close enough to work to walk/bike you will lose your job and be forced to work forty miles away.
When I lived in Phoenix, I rode my bike everywhere. Now that I live in Houston (one of the most sprawled cities in existance) I have gained massive amounts of weight, and regularly commuted 3+ hours a day.
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Inevitably, the blame for their anger will fall upon their parents.... for being "too white".
It's a basic law of physics. Eating more calories than you burn with regularity makes you fat, and no amount of excuses will change that. As we become more sedentary due to technology's conveniences, our caloric needs decrease, and it is up to us to either take up recreational physical activity to continue our diets or restrict calories accordingly.
I am sick of the excuses made, and it's time to do something about the obesity epidemic before it bankrupts our healthcare system.
1) I am currently in grad school in rural Indiana. Prior to that I was in undergrad in downtown Chicago. While I live about the same distance from school here as I did in Chicago, I cannot walk here. My fiance and familly have all taken the time to not just how much weight I've put on in just a year. Still eating about the same.. never went out of my way to exercise in Chicago.. but there you go (No, I was never "thin" but I've gained about 20 lbs.. which is very visible weight).
Treadmill comes Thursday (nope, not kidding.. goodbye gut, hello living to 80).
2) What a friend once positted me as the "Hills of beauty" correlation. The women in cities which are built on hills tend to be more svelt and.. just generally.. better looking. (there are myrriad benefits linked to arobic exercise other than straight weight control - such as clarity of eye-whites, blood flow to the epidermus, etc). Rome proved this one for me.
So, I propose the following.. From now on we require that all towns be constructed with many sidewalks that needlessly go up and down in elevation of at least 15 ft waves. (30 ft from high point to low point, getting off the sidewalk when it hits ground level.
Well?
-Gih
(Durr.. making a joke.. but points 1 and 2 are serious.)
Given the choice of a suburban area with decent police patrols, areas in cul de sacs where children can play with a low risk of getting run over by a drunk or drugged driver, and good schools versus crime-ridden slums in the center of most cities where the only education kids get is how to avoid (or join) gangs, and exposure to pot, meth, heroin, and other nice substances... I'll stay in the suburbs, thank you very much.
.38 special.
We can see why people either live in the suburbs, make new suburbs... or will move to the suburbs when they can. I rather deal with a bit of weight from fat than losing body mass due to exit holes from some felon's
Certainly it would be fair to say that urban areas are constantly reorganizing themselves, but notions of truly urban areas sprawling out to encompass suburban and rural areas seem unsupported. Again, perhaps "suburban sprawl" would be a more realistic topic, thought that is a different beast entirely.
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No, our fat makes us fat.
1 (short ton / firkin) = 89.1432354 slugs / keg
It's not rocket science: "Oh, God. We think there is a real pattern here. When people live within walking distance of interesting places and activities, they walk more, burn more calories, and are slimmer on average." Do I get a PhD now for not being an idiot?
Losing weight is incredibly simple. The entire topic can be covered in 4 words: Eat less, exercise more.
Not surprisingly people become ugly fat porkers because they don't follow that simple four word formula.
(This isn't self-righteous spew -- I need to lose about 20kg to be at my optimal weight. At least I know the only person I have to blame is myself.)
Some people are like slinkies--basically useless but they bring a smile to your face when pushed down the stairs.
We all generally EAT TOO MUCH! Our guts are too big and so our hunger satisfaction signal is delayed. Working out and being active is good and all, but that's not the biggest part of what's wrong. It's WHAT we eat and how much of it we eat. That's why these stomach stapling operations are so remarkably effective. It's clearly not that these people have been working out too little, but that they have been eating too much. The solution is most simple and direct.
EAT LESS.
I'm kind of over-weight myself... I'm working on it... sorta. I never claimed the answer would be easy... I'm just identifying the problem for what it really is. Working out and being more active to "compensate" for the enormous amount of food we take in doesn't leave much time with family, friends or work. It's nearly impossible to work out enough to compensate for the diets most of us indulge in... just eat less.
For my experience in cc philly, the cities tend to skew more towards attracting the young single professionals that are very active all the time. As they get hooked up and preggers, they tend to move to the suburbs for their breeding periods and their fattening up. The ones that stay to breed in the city (more and more of the families are staying in town than before) also get fat, but most numerically end up in the suburbs with more sprawl. So I go for correlation not causation on this one.
It's certainly not as friendly as europe, but things are definitely changing for the better in Colorado.
I technically live in an ex-burb (cringe) and they haven't finished building all the paths, but there are a few places I can get to mostly on bike trails, and within a few years we'll be connected to one of the main trail networks so i'll be able to travel to locations around 15 miles away rarely crossing any roads. A fair number of the new roads have bike lanes.
I can think of a few pedestrian bridges over major roads and a few more underpasses and there are pedestrian crossings at *most* intersections including all those in built up areas.
I can even walk from my office to my wife's office faster than i can drive (at least I can when there isn't several feet of snow on the ground).
On the other hand, I spent a night stranded in Dallas and probably spent 45 minutes trying to walk from my hotel to a shopping mall that I could see. In the end i gave up and had dinner delivered.
At least, that was the experience of a friend of mine. He gained weight when he moved from a city to a small town. The reason he gave was this: When in the city, he had to walk to the station, and then walk from the city station to the office. Even if he drove his car, it was still a small hike from the car park to the office. When he moved, he drove to work, and parked mere meters from his office chair, in which he was to remain all day. There is nothing so simple, is there?
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
Cities shouldn't be planned. Sprawl is a perjorative term for single family homes with yard and surrounding comercial/office/light industrial development outside cities. People choose sprawl over centrally planned apartment blocks near public transportation
If you actually dwell in a city sprawl is much preferable to its alternative "infill" in which the developers and planners crowd up your city neighborhood giving you the same headaches as the sprawl residents without their benefits of lower cost/ more space.
Let people choose-don't rely on authoritarian "planning". As for the subject you can walk/run/exercise anywhere.
Hello! Inspiration for patterns! Gang of four! "A Pattern Language"? "The Timeless Way of Building"? Hello? Anyone out there?
Sorry. I got snotty ther efor a moment. One of the points of his books is that modern bureaucracy specifies building codes that demand the end results this study sees. It's been out there for decades at this point. How sad.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Black market
Well I preferred the great Australian poet Les Murray's take on "sprawl" -- a far better use of a great-sounding word:
Read more
It's not the sprawl it's the transportation system. Lots of other countries have urban sprawl but the fact that people often use public transportation leads to them walking a lot more to get from the train stop to wherever they are going. In the US in almost every city the entire road system is built on the premise that you have a car and that you will drive directly from your garage straight to the parking lot of wherever you are going and do almost no walking at all.
Why do we need to do a study on this though? It's useless information. We know the basic gist of why people get fat. The human body wants to store energy in case of emergency and runs itself on the premise of conserving energy when energy intake gets low. Thus the only real way to keep a fit body is exertion and a decent intake of calories. Instead of worrying about ways to cause people to exert themselves more how about we spend our money on real solutions like fixing the human body so it doesn't have to operate in a prehistoric fashion.
But my experience bears this hypothesis out. I haven't lived more than a year in a single place in a decade, and my time has been split between west coast car-oriented suburban sprawl cities and east coast and midwest dense subway-and-sidewalk cities, all in the U.S. I've gone back and forth a bunch of times.
Each time I move east to a dense subway-and-sidewalk city, I lose a good 40 pounds without even thinking about it. (I'm a pretty tall guy, so it's not as drastic as it may at first seem.) When I move to a suburbs-and-car city, I gain it back without even thinking about it. The difference in mode of transit (walking and standing a lot vs. driving a lot) seems to be enough to tip the balance. There may also be a dietary component, since I've noticed that (for example) living in L.A. I seem to live almost entirely on standardized-menu fast food (which tends to be junk food) because it's simply what's available to those who don't cook, while living in New York (as I am now), I tend to live almost entirely on local deli and mom-pop-restaurant food, much more "fresh ingredients" and much less "whatever the warehouse supplier sends over to the drive-thru."
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Did you know children with big feet are better at math? It's true. For the millionth time, correlation does NOT equal causality. It's a disgrace for Slashdot to call this science.
From wordweb:
sprawl
Noun. An ungainly posture with arms and legs spread about
Verb. Sit or lie with one's limbs spread out
Of course it makes us fat!
-Sankyuu
One site I check every few months is the Victoria Transit Policy Institure . They have a lot of resources on sustainable transportation policy. When I watched my previous employer start paying for additional parking spots for new employees, I looked to VTPI for information on parking cash out. Cash out is an incentive program to not drive - if it costs the company $30/month for a parking spot, cash out programs pay employees the savings from not providing a parking spot. This encourages people to bus and bike to work. In my case, the employer wasn't interested, one of many reasons I no longer work there, but that's another story.
When I read the title of this article, I immediately though of VTPI. There is actually a PDF cowritten by Lawrence Frank which is listed on the VTPI main page, which is available from Smart Growth BC. Lawrence Frank is mentioned in TFA, and several of his studies are linked at the bottom. The Smart Growth BC PDF did not appear to be in the list of links at the bottom of the TFA at Science News Online. The PDF is 52 pages long, and is titled Promoting Public Health Through Smart Growth (also an HTML version from Google cache to avoid melting down Smart Growth BC's server). It's more about how to design your cities properly, to avoid the health issues cited in TFA. From the preface to the PDF:
I enjoy most of the information on the VTPI site, but then again, for me, they're mostly preaching to the converted. I'd rather relax and read on the bus for an hour, or enjoy a 1 hour bike ride to work than fight rush hour traffic in a car for a half hour.Slashdot - the place where you can look like a genius by restating the obvious
Now, this is purely anecdotal but it does raise some questions.
I have approximately 25 first cousins on my dad's side of the family. All of our previous generation who grew up together show the same build characteristics. 8 of us grew up in suburban/rural environments, the rest in the city.
All of the suburban males are built more or less the same. In our teen years, we had a line backer type build and as we've aged, we've kept a lot of the muscle but we've also picked up some fat. One urban male was obese from the time he was two years old and remains that way. Two urban males were murdered. The west have a wide receiver type build and generally seem to be maintaining it. All of the urban males have done jail sentences to my knowledge.
One suburban female is slim. All of the rest of the females, urban or suburban are somewhere between chubby and "OMFG how does she get through the door?" The slim one (my sister) is probably that way from years of a variety of drug abuse. Again, this shows a general family consistency for body size.
Now... why did the suburban males have a larger build while the urban males had a smaller build? We all played the same sports. The urban boys walked around a lot but we also rode bikes long distances a lot (a 10 or 15 mile bike ride up and down hills wasn't unheard of). The suburban males also did a lot of activities not open to the urbanites such as hunting, ATV riding, etc. I think the key, though, was that the suburban males ate VASTLY different from the urban ones. We all had our share of junk food but the suburban males all had large family meals while the urban kids didn't really eat as a family and if they did eat at home, it was usually something like hamburger helper, spaghetti or a cassarole that could be just slapped together. And before you zing me for a stereotype, yes... all the urban families were on welfare. The suburban kids were probably consuming twice the calories of the urban kids on a daily basis.
Now... as we've gotten older, the suburban males still live in the suburbs as we exercise less than we used to which is probably why we've put on some weight. None of us have older kids or large families like our parents did, so there is less pressure to eat as much since we obviously need less. It's easy to try to point at sprawl and make it seem like the bad guy here... however, would you rather put on 20 pounds and live a fairly safe, productive life or would you rather spend your life in and out of jail, never holding down a serious job and end up risk taking 50 years off your life by getting killed? Those odds are just anecdotal and its possible that we're exceptionally stereotypical as an extended family but I know where my kids will be growing up. And lest you say that the suburbanites should have done more for their urban family, we tried but the urban parents fought tooth and nail. The two who spent the most time with us on the weekends are the ones who've mostly managed to stay out of jail and have some type of life for themselves and their family, unfortunately, one of them was murdered the day his infant son died of the flu because he got drunk and confrontational knocking on the door of the babysitter's house.
Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.
Let's throw out some other ideas, just for kicks. Maybe people who live in low-sprawl, compact cities like New York City, San Francisco, or Toronto...
You could think up some other possible alternative explanations, I'm sure.
Here's a question worth asking: Seems to me that the greater Los Angeles area has as much "sprawl" as anyplace in America. Are Angelenos fatter than the rest of the country? Doesn't seem like it, to me.
Breakfast served all day!
Mr. Turner should give them some credit. Hijacking the obesity epidemic is no small feat. That sumbitch weighs a ton.
Step one: Conclude that sprawl is bad and ant-cities are good
Step two: Concoct a study to demonstrate it. Massage data as appropriate
Step three: There is no profit because no matter how much you try, you're not shoehorning our oversized buttocks back into anthills.
Seriously, have these people seen the size of people in Philadelphia? The suburbs are MUCH less fat.
lazy people choose not to live in cities where they will have to walk so much, therefore they get fat living in the suburbs where they can be lazy and drive. its not the suburbs that make you fat, its the attitude of the people who choose to live in the suburbs that leads to those results. lazy people aren't interested in living in a city where one is required to walk places, they want to drive their car and avoid effort. so in a way the study is correct, but it's missing the human element.
also, to address the point made earlier suggesting that teenagers in the burbs, who are given no input on their living location, are heavier because there are less walking opportunities - that all depends on whether you value nature or nurture. actually, it mainly depends on if you consider either one of them. the fat people are obviously going to have fat kids because a) its probably in the family genes and b) if your parents are fat they are probably lazy (unless they have some sort of genetic deformity - refer to part a) and a large portion of childrens' development is based on their main role models - their parents - therefore they pick up on those lazy traits. so if the fat people live in the suburbs, fat kids are gonna live there too and it's not just because there are less walking opportunities.
and thus i have put this issue to rest.
"i stand on the edge of destruction" -shai hulud
I love how today's conservatives (and many liberals) will argue that the government should not "expand" to fund mass transit..
yet their beloved highways were built with public funding by a republican ; )
oh the hypocrisy.
it all comes back to 2 very real problems in the US..
hatred of the poor and the connected issue of racism (since centuries of discrimination have left those who are "not white" at a disadvantage).
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Well, back when it first became trendy to hate the suburbs, "urban sprawl" meant a whole different thing than it does today. It USED to refer to the idea that cities were expanding without limit, adding new suburbs miles away from any services, with these huge empty tracts of land in between them- but still adding to the overall size of the city.
Then study after study showed that cities were in fact not "sprawling", but growing at a rate consistent with population growth, and typically including said services within the outlying communities. Some even showed major US cities, on average, were expanding SLOWER than in the past, and slower than the population growth rate would normally account for.
So, we re-defined "sprawl" - now, it refers to the concept of any new development on virgin land, any sense of private land ownership, and any usage of cars whatsoever. In essence, there's a growing number of people who would like to put a halt on any outward expansion at all, and instead have everyone live in ultra-dense communities patterned after Manhattan. No cars, no houses. Just acres and acres of high-rises and subways.
And, like everything else in reality, there's a happy medium. But it's still currently trendy to bash nearly all development as "sprawl".
"You can't OWN property, man."
"Of course I can, but that's because I'm not a penniless hippie!"
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Newer areas in/around towns are zoned per use. Houses here, stores there, strip malls there and industries there.
Those areas are seldom contiguous.
In old cities (both in north America and Europe), you'll see mixed land use: stores on the first floor, housing higher, and maybe some industries.
Where I live, next door is a music recording studio, on the next block is a soap company warehouse, a small garage (no gas pumps) as well as many houses. On yet another block, four nice beautifully maintained farmhouses keep piling architectural and landscaping awards year after year, right next to a "wedge house" featured in a well-known classic novel right by the railroad crossing.
On the other side of the tracks stands old factories turned into lofts, a food wholesaler and some factories, right by the old canal (that has been re-opened to pleasure crafts after 30 years of being closed).
5 blocks from there is a major farmer's market, and the whole neighbourhood is served by two subway stations, and a 5 minute ride into downtown. The neighbourhood "main" street (which is actually 20 miles long) has all the services; bank, post office, drugstores, restaurants (from the lowly greasy spoon or Mc Donald's to exotic or ritzy eateries with shows).
I've had three jobs in that neighbourhood; being able to come home for lunch is a big advantage (now I telecommute -- which saves me a 1.5 hour commute); this is a quality of life that is unnatainable in suburbia, thanks to the million problems not brought about by having a car.
And it is a quality of life that would not be possible without mixed land use.
Uhhh. Excuse me. Smart growth agenda? What the hell? Is it not logical for the well-being of the earth (and now- surprise- our health) to live in higher density urban centres, thus expending less energy to travel?
Put down the fork!
I'm a quite disappointed, if true that kids are overweight in suburbia. There's plenty of oppotunity: large parks to play in (which is free!) and at least where I live there are some local wooded trails. I've been biking, jogging and walking through those trails for some time now. One observation though is that most people using the parks have a dog. That might be one link.
But more than anything, people have to stop driving all over the place. One has to do with sheer laziness. Something the kids learn. I should feel safe walking on the streets (a question of coverage of sidewalks and not havng to cross major thorough fares with crazy drivers trying to run me over.
The big thing, IMO from stopping the laziness: big box stores. And its where a lot of people shop. In most of the communities I've observed in Ontario, Quebec, and NE U.S., the bix box stores tend to be at the outermost edges of the suburban areas. No easily accessible side walks, public transit. Its all poor city planing.
As an example, this summer, I decided I was going to go to shop at a big box store. The store is no more than 15 minutes each way walk. At least figuratively when you take the main road and drive over. But it was a nice day. So I walk for 10 minutes. I figure a shortcut/pathway I could take would surely lead to the store. Nope, city didn't build em. So I ended up taking the only way there. detour. Took an extra 10 minutes each way. Yeah, I drive now.
We have made our choice: destroy the only planet known to bear life in the universe in exchange for a few generations living in the suburbs that don't have to get out of their cars to eat hamburgers.
No kidding?
Does this knowledge lead to any conclusions on how to reverse the process whereby you got fat?
If it does, can I buy your diet book?
I come from Denmark but am staying in Minneapolis for a year. In Denmark you can walk to a nearby mall or at least a well-stocked convenience store pretty much no-matter where you live if you do not live too far from the central city. Where I live in Denmark I can *walk* to *everything* I need to do on a regular basis, and everything else is within convinient biking or bus distance. I don't have a car and I would have a use for a driver's license maybe once a year (when living in Denmark, that is).
Now, in Minneapolis, practically nothing is within walking distance no matter where you live and the bus system is an absolute pain to figure out even using their online planner. Not having a car around here is a serious social handicap, and it makes shopping a taxing experience, because everything is spread out within a huge area. I can't help but conclude that people around here actually *enjoy* spending alot of time in their cars, so that distance is an advantage to them.
Other than that, this is a very nice place, but for people who live here permanently, not having a car is simply not a workable option.
Bjarke Roune
I used to live in Lexington, KY. While you wouldn't call it urban, it isn't sprawling either. I'm an avid cyclist, and I lived a couple blocks from downtown in the Chevy Chase area. Lovely. Great location. Why? Because I could be on my bike, out the driveway, and into the countryside in under five miles. I walked a mile to work. As of April of last year, I was down 10 lbs. from my regular weight, and I wasn't even trying. It was every day life that afforded me the ability to burn those calories.
Now, I live in the Northern Kentucky/Greater Cincinnati area. Talk about sprawl. There's no riding out my driveway and out into the countryside without a trunk rack and a minimum 10-minute drive away from the 'burbs. I'm just off KY18, a freeway of certain death for a cyclist. I'd sooner enter a competitive eating contest than venture out onto KY18 and get aced. I'm 10 lbs. overweight now: a 20 lbs. swing in the last nine months.
Point is, in the 'burbs, everyday life no longer suits a fit lifestyle.
It's always easy to accuse something/body else. Yet it is sure that we get fat if and only if we eat wrong food too much and exercise too little.
Weight loosing is simple, (but not easy)
1. Do not fatty food. No fries!
2. Stop eating any sweets and avoid sugar.
3. Use every opportunity to move. Use stairs instead elevator etc.
4. Do not eat anything "stomach full". Eat on only to kill the hunger. This does not strech the stomach. It will shrink in time and you'll feel full after smaller lunch.
5. When hungry, drink first two glasses of water.
You don't need magic diets or pills. All it takes is self-discipline.
Does sprawl make us fat?
I guess it depends on how much sprawl you eat.
A better question: If part of my body sprawls, am I fat?
So, does this mean Morgan Spurlock now needs to film a documentary in which he lives in the suburbs for a month?
New urbanism is probably a step in the right direction, but it appears to be missing critical elements of successful older neighborhoods. Jane Jacobs emphasizes the need for buildings of various ages (and which can be repurposed as the community changes): the book shops in old houses, funky music stores, arty cafes and so on that make for a hip urban environment often can't afford the rent of flashy new buildings. It strikes me as strange that a society which so strongly rejected the idea (if not always the practice) of central planning during the Cold War prides itself in its "master planned" communities."
Furthermore, a vibrant community requires more than just residential and commercial uses. The plans I have seen often look attractive, but on closer examination bear a striking resemblance to malls turned inside out and mixed with housing. They may have greenspace or plazas, but like the landscaping around so many highrises these are often private or effectively gated. The real test of urban spaces is whether they are used. Once built, the pretty designs of planners are often lonely places. On the other hand, sometimes the least attractive spaces are great successes (think of skate parks).
So I don't really think it's ironic the planners of gated communities are building new urban spaces which can also be privatized and desolate; they're simply taking their old approach of centralization and control and dressing it up in new clothes.
On the other hand, it's not all their fault. Developers who do want to take a risk often run into senseless rules regulating every detail of their communities, such as requirements for streets big enough for fire trucks to turn around in to minimum parking spaces, wide streets, huge setbacks in front of buildings, low densities, and so forth. Sprawl has been institutionalized in North America, and bureaucracy has been slow to change. (And I suspect rather than releasing their grip they're probably just making up new rules.)
Eat less, shit more.
I'll never understand that. Its called BREAD, and FILLING, people... bring a freakin' sandwich.
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
Does Sprawl Make Us Fat?
No. Sitting on our fat asses makes us fat!
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
I've lived in places that are at both ends of the spectrum. During high school I lived in suburban Houston, in a 'master-planned community' (a.k.a bunch of big houses in a cow field, with a golf course and country club) about 30 miles from downtown Houston. I had a job downtown at one point and spent a couple hours a day commuting. Now I live in Vancouver which is mentioned in the article as a poster-child for compact urban development. Here I commute to work on my bicycle (about 40 minutes a day of riding), walk to get groceries (maybe another 10-20 minutes of excercise), and since I don't spent two hours a day in my car I often have time to do other activities. Certainly I have a much healthier lifestyle here than I could have in Houston.
The problem with Vancouver is affordability. You simply can't buy a place to live in Vancouver for less than $200,000 -- that's pretty much the entry-level price for a 1 bedroom 600 square foot condo here right now. If you compare it to what you can buy for the same price in a suburban Texas community, the difference is phenomenal. Other pedestrian friendly areas like Manhattan and San Francisco have similar affordability crises. So, is that the price of living a healthy lifestyle? That's the way I view it. It's a trade-off between dollars and square feet on the one side, health and free time on the other. I'm willing to pay vastly more to live in Vancouver because I enjoy the lifestyle here and I can afford it. But many of the people who would want to live in a dense area like this simply don't have the option because it's not affordable.
Slightly off topic, but I often wonder what will happen after we run out of oil and people no longer have the choice of driving such great distances to live way out in the burbs. Will everyone flock to centres like Vancouver and Manhattan that are set up better for car-free living? Will more sprawling cities like Atlanta and Houston somehow reinvent themselves to form tighter urban centres? Could they? Would huge metropolises die out and turn into a smaller number of mini-cities, as businesses start popping up in suburbs closer to peoples comes? Will people be healthier?
"We all generally EAT TOO MUCH! Our guts are too big and so our hunger satisfaction signal is delayed. Working out and being active is good and all, but that's not the biggest part of what's wrong. It's WHAT we eat and how much of it we eat."
Actually, any doctor, physiologist or nutritionist will tell you that the problem has two parts: we don't exercise enough, and we eat too much. Both problems are equally important, and it's actually a far better idea to increase your activity than to drastically cut your caloric intake (if you're forced to choose). It's best to do both.
If you live a sedentary lifestyle but drastically cut calories, your body will eventually "decide" that you are starving, and will slow your metabolic rate to compensate (amongst other changes, such as the increase in serum cortisol levels, and the activation of lipid storage enzymes -- which essentially means that you'll begin to destroy muscle, in favor of preserving fat). This is why conventional diets do not work -- most people simply lose muscle mass (and/or water weight), eventually tire of starving themselves, and baloon back up to their pre-diet weight, with a lower lean body mass as a reward.
So, while the Big Mac culture is certainly a problem in the US, the only way to battle obesity in the long term is to encourage exercise. Dietary changes alone will not work.
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
Does this shopping mall make my ass look big?
You had me at merlot
I live in London. Back in SA I used to drive everywhere, but I was a healthy 70KG. Since moving to the UK, I gained 12KG over the space of 7 years.
Recently I realised that this was insane, read the hacker's diet and starting shedding this weight. I'm now down to 73kg and dropping.
What's really relevant to this article though, is the fact that my car is a massive aid in losing this weight. Using public transport, I spend 2 - 2.5 hours per day travelling. Using my car, this goes down to 45 minutes - 1 hour. That's a savings of 1 - 1.5 hours per day, or 5 - 7.5 hours per week.
Because of this, I actually have time to get to the gym, go climbing on the weekends because the housework is done during the week, etc.
are you high?
> These kids have never moved, never had a choice about where they live and are still much fatter.
Doesn't really mean anything, as habits with regard to eating and exercise tend to be inherited.
In the US, local commerce is rigidly controlled through zoning laws. It would be nice to have a neighborhood store, or set of shops, etc, but most local governments don't allow mixing commercial areas with residential.
It's simply against the law.
Land of the free, my ass.
That just begs the question, and forgive me for asking, but are fat fucks a renewable resource? Certainly America has a lot of people so large that they need to attach orange flags to their elbows when they ride a bicycle because they overhang the bike lane on both sides like a stack of plywood in a compact pickup truck, but what happens when the Lard Zepplin crashes?
Help us build a better map!
Of course walking up several flights of stairs because you live in a big city, or havin to bike several miles a day to work, or having to walk a mile to get some groceries at the corner store is going to burn more calories than sitting at home, but forcing everyone to live this kind of lifestyle is a bit Maoist if you ask me. I mean, if you have arthritis or asthma, or a heart condition then I guess you are SOL.
If you do live in a community that lacks parks, trails, or sidewalks/roads you can safely jog on, you don't even need a stairmaster or stationary bike to stay fit. All you need is the discipline to do basic resistance exercises every day. Just a quick intense workout when you wake up in the morning, and you will find it hard to get fat. Pushups, situps/crunches, dips, squats, etc. without weights but done in an explosive fashion will burn a lot of calories very fast and keep your muscles toned as well. You don't need to run 10 miles or do aerobics for an hour to burn a lot of calories if you are know that anaerobic exercise is about 8 times less efficient in calorie usage as aerobic exercise. What this essentially means is that anaerobic exercise will burn calories 8 times faster than aerobic exercise.
Of course, you could just lift weights for 10-15 minutes a day like I do, but if you don't have the space or the money to afford free weights, do the next best thing and do the basics to keep fit. It doesn't take a lot of time, just the discipline to make it part of your daily routine as if it was as core to your day as brushing your teeth.
I live in Los Angeles, *the* textbook example of urban sprawl, and I can't help thinking "What's will all the fat chicks?"
No dear, your ass looks fine.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
1. About "no brainers", lots of things looked like "no brainers" at various points, and turned up to be false. E.g., at some point it looked like a no brainer that a cannonball twice as heavy falls twice as fast. That's why we still do studies to try to prove or disprove it.
2. Teenagers and kids pick the bad habbits of their parents, and are fed by their fat parents, so it's not exactly that independent.
E.g., I can tell you that both me and my brother got to eat a lot of fat and sugar as kids, because that's what both our parents liked. And I mean pretty much literally everything made with very fat meat, fried in lots of fat, and pretty much everything doused in lots of fat as served. Then came mom's cakes which, delicious as they were, were an exercise in eating a lot of butter with a heck of a lot of sugar.
Mom turned from a slim girl into, well, something resembling the dwarf females in WoW even without living in the suburbs. She also destroyed her liver by now (though her taking generous doses antibiotics for anything and everything probably also helped.)
Guess what? So does everyone in the family, because we all were stuffed with the same things. Worse yet, taste is an educated thing, so my brother still swears by foods doused in generous amounts of fat. He got asked by his doctor around the age of 30 if he's an alcoholic, after seeing his liver numbers. The guy pretty much doesn't drink. He's also overweight.
I tried to resist, and in fact dinner time was pretty much the only conflict I had with my parents, but they weren't going to accept my being fussy at the dinner table. No, young man, you're gonna eat that big chunk of fat if you want any dessert. And you're going to finish everything on that heaped plate, at that. Figures. Other kids get told to eat their veggies.
Still, I had eventually at least managed to get them to heap my plate less. Most kids probably don't even put that kind of a resistance. My brother, for example, just gave up after a desperate last stand where he just stopped eating at all. And I'm not talking a rebellious teenager, but a primary school kid. You have to get one really desperate to do something like that. But after he got out of hospital, he just fell in line. Still, as I was saying, at least I had negotiated some half-way truce with my parents.
But then came a whole summer vacation at my grandma from dad's side, when I was about 10 years old. (Guess where dad had learned to like such foods?) She stuffed me into such a nice round shape, that you could swear I'm a South Park character. Literally. I ran around the garden and stuff all day long (not out of some clever plan to burn calories, but because that's what kids do), but the calories intake was just so hideously high, that nothing could get rid of them. The shock of seeing me literally beachball shaped was such that, well, let's just say my parents never left me in her care ever again.
Thank goodness, I did finally switch to eating half-way sane (well, I still like sugar) after moving away, so I'm the only one whose liver still sorta works. As I was mentioning, my brother didn't.
Anyway, sorry if this extreme example sounds like whining about my family, the point I'm trying to illustrate is actually: kids and teenagers don't have control over more things than where they live. It's not like those kids in the suburbs get otherwise free hand over what they eat. If their parents eat crap, the kids eat crap too, and learn to like eating crap. If their parents' idea of a family evening out is going to McDonald and eating a mayo-doused burger, the kids grow up with the idea that mayo is good food and that being taken to a junk food joint is good times, or even a sort of a reward. It gets associated, Pavlov-style, with doing something together with the parents and getting lots of dad's attention, which is good times for a kid. If the parents' idea of a family evening together is sitting together in front of the idiot box, the kids too get the idea that that's what you do in the evenings.
So, yes, the fatsoes who moved to the suburbs so don't even have to walk to the corner store, raise their kids to be fat too. How's that for a different causation?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I live in a city that can be defined as the opposite of sprawl: Venice (Venezia), Italy. Buildings here are closer one to another than any place I know of. Some "calli" (pedestrian passages) are as narrow as half meter. Cars just don't enter the city beyond the parkings at the end of the bridge that connects it to the mainland, and even bikes are not allowed. You just walk. Every time your way intersects a canal, you have to go up and down the steps of a bridge. Because of the high density, the time spent moving from place to place in everyday business is not different from that in car-only cities. Remove the time spent looking for a parking place (a big problem in most Italian cities) and you have a net time advantage. You don't see many obese people in Venice and even elders citizens tend to be healthier than in other places. People meet and talk in the streets. Goods travel almost exclusively on water, on a network that is completely separate from that of persons. One of the downsides is a very uncomfortable environment for disabled people: wheelchairs weren't an option when the city was built!
Nuffsaid
________
Don't know about his cat, but Schroedinger is definitely dead.
Sprawl doesn't make us fat, I haven't driven anywhere in months, I've walked everywhere I need to go & I've gone from 6'2" 170-180LBS to 6'2" 200-205LBS.
Sure I haven't been outside in over a week, but I haven't driven anywhere in months either.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
In the U.S. at least. We're afraid of crime and/or minorities and so we move further out to be away from them. We're afraid our kids will be abducted or abused so we drive them to the bus stop so that they can go to school, even though the bus stop is just a few blocks from our home. We then sit there with the engine running and the doors locked until the kids board the bus, and drive back home. Kids can't be allowed to play on their own, we have to constantly watch them if they want to go to the park. But thanks to our commute back and forth to work we don't have time to actually supervise them. So we forbid them to go out after school and leave them at home in front of the television or with their game consoles. Not to mention their sugary snacks and processed foods. Commuting parents often don't have time to actually prepare food from scratch.
Fear is the driving force behind sprawl, and fear sets the pattern for our sedentary lifestyles. It's our fears that make us fat.
As a culture we need to get over it.
When i lived close to uni, shops, pubs etc I did not need a car. I walked or rode my bike. Now that i dont live as close to work as i did with uni, i drive my car and i usually pick up any food etc on my way back home from work.... Mind you, when its not too cold and not to hot, i have been known to park my car 45 minutes walk away from work, thus my exercise ;).
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
I don't know if all the US is like this, but every spawling area that I've been to in the US is insanely pedestrian unfriendly.
Let's face it. Kids should walk to school, under most circumstances. But they don't. Most of them are hauled off to the obligatory public school, which may not be nearby due to mandatory bussing for Political Correctness' sake. Then they are hauled back home again (and maybe alone) by the same functionally illiterate bus drivers who (effectively) work for the public school system that is making the kids stupid. Only retards would ride or want their kids to ride one of those annoying yellow school buses. Walking is very good, but being chauffered to/from school in a flash car is *MUCH* more fun. School buses suck. 'Nuf said!
Oh, yeah, what was this thread about before I tried to divert it for entertainment?
"You're young, you're drunk, you're in bed, you have knives; shit happens." -- Angelina Jolie
I'm curious, how many people use their yards? In particular, use BOTH yards. How many people use their yards for things that couldn't be done if there were a small grassy park within an easy walk? My neighbors NEVER use their front yards. The backyards do get some use: pools, parties, etc. Even half of those are with other neighbors anyways, and almost always with neighbors when the kids use them. The only activity that front yards seem to have is getting mowed.
Stockholm did exactly that. The fee you pay is dependent on the time of day you enter the enter the fare area with your car.
The system was in force from January 3, 2006 to July 31, 2006. Final implementation is now under consideration.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
- but there's always only one cause for obesity: when you eat more than you need.
There's a number of contributing factors: sedentary lifestyle, easily available, high-calorie food etc. Sprawl makes it difficult to do anything without a car, so people get less exercise; but a possibly much greater factor is the fact that we eat more and more instant meals and other industrialised foods. This kind of food has been prepared with unnatural fats (containing eg. trans-fatty acids, which tend push you towards metabolic syndrome), cheap, but unhealthy sugars (such as fructose, which seems to be converted to fat more readily than glucose) and additives that upset your body chemistry. The general boredom that often pervades a sedentary lifestyle means that people eat too much - what else is there to do? - and the pounds just pile on.
So, the answer is - sprawl contributes towards obesity, but if you want to lose weight/avoid gaining it, avoid factory food (IOW cook your own meals) and get out much more.
People make people fat.
...
... Speaking as one who has never owned a car, even when living in Perth, one of the most car-is-king locations on earth ...
Although, because there is no longer any 'corner shops', well, on the corner, everyone thinks they have to drive everywhere to do everything
Although they don't. They're just lazy.
_
\\/ are accustomed' - First Lensman
Won't the urban sprawl problem fix it self (after a long while but nevertheless.) TBH I don't remember seeing an urban sprawl before so I'm just guessing what it is like. The land price of part of the urban sprawl nearer the town will increase in price as it is nearer the jobs and shops and the owners will be encouraged to sell it to a couple of people to build more houses on their, or they may sell part of the land so someone else can build another house there. I'm sure there are other ways it would happen that was just one example, but the point is that higher density buildings will grow outward throughout the urban sprawl.
I haven't mentioned zoning, maybe that is one thing that slows the natural process down.
Well, I guess it isn't any worse than the people doing the zoning have already done.Believe me, if you sprawl daily, you will not get fat. The survey is clearly erroneous.
% 29)
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprawl_%28grappling
its a requirement that subdivisions have sidewalks on one side of the street, they must also put them in on the road the connect to for a short distance both ways.
Some of the larger (2000-5000 home) subdivisions have sidewalks on both sides that are large and wide and they use them to connect to various functions within the subdivision.
Where you find the lack of sidewalks is usually in older subdivisions or those put up by small builders who either built too few homes to be subject to regulation or just ignored it (and yes you can get away with ignoring some regulations like sidewalks by completing the subdivision and just up and leaving)
As to them leading to a heavier lifestyle? Well considering the issue of lots of retired people moving out into them to get away from the hustle and bustle I can see it. They are in their later years and many aren't looking for strenous activity. As for kids, fat kids exist everywhere, its up to parents to give them real alternatives instead of leaving them to a gamebox and tv.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Pure speculation, here, but I think there's a possiblity that your set of evidence may not be the norm. Seriously, though, environment seems to be less of a factor for your family than circumstance, economic class, and disposition. While it's possible that there may be some broad risk-assessment statistic that could back up your implication that living in the city is inherently more dangerous than living in the suburbs, it seems disingenuous to distill it to such a black and white choice between fit-but-dead and overweight-but-safe. It sounds like your urban-dwelling family members just had shit luck.
Cut. Off. Your. Leg. For a reasonably healthy righty like myself, I might just need to go for my left arm.
Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
However, because of sprawl, there are no parks nearby. You have to get into a car to get to the park.
You see, small pocket parks and playgrounds are not desireable. Kids might hang out there, and cause problems. The only safe thing is to make big out of the way parks where children have to be driven there, by their parents, which I suppose supervises them, but with two parent working families, who has the time to take the kids?
I also recently read about weight of children, and if they had a stay at home parent. Guess who had thinner and healthier children?
Also a little known fact that birds flying south cause cold weather.
I work in a major city and live in a suburb. My commute is 90-120 minutes one way, depending on time of day. I actually have a gym membership, and found that I really enjoy going. However, my visits have dropped off sharply (er... non-existent now) because even a "normal" day of work (9 hours) is 12-13 hours long. Add a family into the mix, and it makes getting proper exercise very difficult.
I walk to the train (10-15 minutes) when the weather is nice, and walk once I'm in the city -- total of maybe 20-30 minutes of walking per day, but that's all I can do. Better than nothing, granted, but it's not what I need to be doing.
The killer in the whole thing is the commute, as others have noted. By the time I get home, I'm exhausted. I wind up eating dinner at 8:30-9:00 at night, which is awful for one's health, even though my wife is religious about cooking healthy food for me.
Anecdotally, I go on vacation for two weeks in the summer. During that time, I typically lose more than ten pounds, without doing anything particularly strenuous. Just the fact that I'm not at my sedentary job (programming), sitting on a train for 3 hours, and eating late meals knocks off the weight. If I could take more than two weeks off, I bet I'd knock off 20 pounds or more.
Once my contract is up, I'll be looking for something more local, but I'm not holding my breath.
As opposed to most cities where you can take a long walk, use public transport + walk, you have a better chance getting "natural excercise" by the day, just walking.
Now look at small towns, where nothing is walking distance, and there are no sidewalks. You are forced to drive your car and you will move a lot less naturally, unless you go on a hike on the weekend or go to the gym. In cities many choose alternative transport, such as bicycles, while on highways you are not even allowed to ride a bike.
But no walking.
I moved out of the city, where I used to walk 5+ km a day, just commuting. Now I am a car potato, or ride a motorbike when weather allows and no formal dressing is required.
Other thing: I seem to see a lot more fat people in small towns and the countryside, and right now visiting the US it seems the same here.
Well just my 2c, I moved a lot more on foot/bicycle when I lived in the big city.
It strikes me as sad when all of these studies are done without a basic understanding of the human condition which can easily explain why this may happen. I'll go into the basics of my own view on the subject, and let you decide if I am as off-base as the other people out there.
People tend to react to stress in one of two ways, it either pushes people to find active ways to release the stress(running, or doing other activities), or it pushes people into doing less active things to try to recover the energy lost due to stress alone. It's generally one or the other, and it is a rare person that ends up doing both.
Now, in the case of urban sprawl, you tend to have two things that happen. Property values go up, and the availability of middle to upper tier jobs goes up.
The higher property values mean the cost of living in the area is higher as a whole, which makes it harder to afford to live. This raises the stress level quite a bit, where most people are worried about money in some way. The standard of living is also higher, and it is human nature to want to keep up with the neighbors in terms of luxury items. You don't have a 10-year-old Ford car when all your neighbors have BMWs for example. So, people tend to live closer to the edge of their available resources.
The jobs in the middle and upper tiers tend to be less active as well when it comes to "white collar" jobs. So, the jobs are less active, and the stress level tends to be higher as well. When people in this type of job work a full day, you get back to the original comment about how people respond to stress when it comes to recreational activities. Some run or get active, but many will just get home, and want to do NOTHING, or go out drinking and socializing with friends.
If the friends are the type for socializing after work to release that stress, that isn't an active way to deal with it for the most part, and as people get into their 30s, they tend to start putting on weight as a result(with some exceptions).
The solution to this would be a more Japanese approach, where companies encourage employees to work out, either before work begins, or after work. In the case of communities in "urban sprawl" areas though, many or most businesses tend to be small, in the 1-25 employee range without the resources to pay for gym memberships, and the office space available doesn't have enough "extra" space for a weight room or other recreational room in addition to the normal "break room".
So, why do these communities tend to have people get "soft"? It's because the economy is out of control, with prices going up and up and up, with employee salaries not going up as quickly as the cost of living. Outdoor activities also tend to be in controlled environments, which can also feel like work, and drive people away.
What a friend once positted me as the "Hills of beauty" correlation. The women in cities which are built on hills tend to be more svelt and.. just generally.. better looking
It's very strange, but I have the opposite impression. I live in a hilly country and I have the impression that many women are, let's say a bit overweight. I studied somewhere where the land is very flat and many women are very pretty. The difference?
Bikes! In this hilly country, a bike is seen as sports equipment, to be used in free time. In the flat country, bikes are seen as a transportation device. The kids there go to school with their bikes as from a very early age. In the hilly country, they take the bus. For the same distances! (I'm thinking 10-15km).... Guess who rides the bike more? It's not those in the hilly country.
I work exactly 10km from my home. I go there by car, because that takes about 15 minutes. Public transport would take over 40 minutes (including waking to the train station, waiting for the train, taking the train, waiting for the next bus, and finally arriving) I guess, I could bike to work. I don't think it's going to take much more than 45 minutes. However, if I'd do this, I'd arrive at work all sweaty because I have at least two very steeps hills to master (yeah, biking home is much more fun). My coworkers aren't going to appreciate it when I arrive sweaty at work. No, we don't have showers at work. Obviously.
Americans, let's face it: We've been a spoiled country for a long time.
Do you know what the number one health risk in America is?
Obesity. They say we're in the middle of an obesity epidemic.
An epidemic like it is polio. Like we'll be telling our grand kids about it one day.
The Great Obesity Epidemic of 2004.
"How'd you get through it grandpa?"
"Oh, it was horrible Johnny, there was cheesecake and pork chops everywhere."
Nobody knows why were getting fatter? Look at our lifestyle.
I'll sit at a drive thru.
I'll sit there behind fifteen other cars instead of getting up to make the eight foot walk to the totally empty counter.
Everything is mega meal, super sized. Want biggie fries, super sized, want to go large.
You want to have thirty burgers for a nickel you fat mother fucker. There's room in the back. Take it!
Want a 55 gallon drum of Coke with that? It's only three more cents.
"That's not hyperbole, but a basic consequence of planning that is downright hostile to anyone who isn't behind the wheel of a car."
Bad design, period. Who thought that a design that intentionally pitted cars and pedestrians in a losing competition should be shot. Yes there are cross-walks, and lights, and signs. But cars routinely ignore those rules. A sane design would have a clear seperation of these two unequal parties, and never should the two meet...unless they want to.
Always suspect any comment that uses the phrase "no brainer". Hyperbole is most commonly used to support weak logic. In this case the possibility that being raised by overwieght parents might contribute to the odds was an obvious factor that was simply ignored.
Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem.-Thomas Szasz
"1) They really really love their cars. So the cities must be build for cars, forget about people they are not important."
Funny how a forum that has "your rights online" would complain about the ultimate freedom symbol.
Stop making excuses. It's not glandular, you're not big boned, it's not the sprawl. Don't put more food in your mouth than you need and you won't get fat.
Although you sound like a complete freak from your posting I really do have to say that I disagree with you. I was brought up in the country (in New Zealand) for the first 18 years of my life and have had a car since I was allowed to drive (age 16). Basically had to have one. I'm now living in London, UK (have been for past 6 years), never had a car over here and I greatly prefer the city at this stage in my life. The conveniences of local shops, public transport (so can have a few beers and never worry about having to drive home) and the massive amount saved by not owning a car is great (perhaps mostly offset by rent being higher in city than country, don't know). So much to do, so easy to travel to anywhere in the world and friends close by (a number within 10 min walk and couple 1 min away!). Don't want to bring up a family in London, but will want to live in a city like Christchurch back in New Zealand, so have convenience of city but live by sea and have many outdoor activities on my doorstep (well, short bike ride or walk away hopefully). Summary of my life so far: Living right out in the burbs/country == inconvenient, living in city == exciting and convenient.
I believe it. In Manhattan it's possible to walk pretty much everywhere and we have some of the most beautiful people in the world. Less than an hour away in our suburbs, it looks like... well, America. Huh...
I didn't see anything in the study that accounted for age.
I live in a town home community. Our town home borders a township park and a small strip of stores. We do our share of walking, but we use our cars for weekend errands, and the daily commute to work.
Most people in our development are in their late 20's, early 30's, or are retired.
Almost everyone here starting a family wants to move into a 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath house, with a 2 car garage, on an acre of land.....but economics drives these housing decisions.
Is it possible that the 40-something people, that can afford the classic suburban house, are 10 lbs heavier because they are a little older and aren't as physically active as they were in their younger years?
-ted
At one time, I lived about 8 miles from work and would commute by bike. When you factored in traffic, lights, etc., my commute took about the same time as driving. I would also do a 12 mile loop over my lunch break so a typical day involved 28 miles of riding. Once a week, however, I would ride - again about 8 miles - to an evening group ride that was about 25 or 30 miles. I would discover that, if I did that 8 mile "warm-up" ride to the group ride, I tended to perform better than if I just drove to it. After the group ride was finished, it was about 7.5 miles from there to home.
Needless to say, I was 15-20 lbs lighter than I am today. Right now, I'm looking at a job offer where my office will, one again, be about 8-9 miles from home, only these days I have a mountain bike. Looking forward to it nonetheless.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Sprawl makes you make yourself fat.
Or even more accurately:
Sprawl makes it more convinient for you to make yourself fat.
I don't know where they get this "urban" sprawl factor. Actual cities discourage cars, in favor of mass transit and just redundantly available places to go that encourage walking, not driving. Cities like NYC are defined primarily by the unusual word "propinquity", "mutual proximity among things". Near enough that cars aren't practical, indeed squeezing out cars, but not so near that you don't burn a few calories walking to them.
Of course, NYC's bustling delivery services take propinquity even further to fatten the lazy. But as a delivery connoisseur who travels, I can tell you that it's only MEGAurban centers that suffer from this convenience surplus. Even in sprawling "megurbs", the outer reaches of the sprawl don't deliver.
As usual, it's the suburbs, and the cities which act like suburbs, which are throwing out the balances. By which I mean tipping the scales towards laziness and fatness.
--
make install -not war
It's too bad there really are no alternatives to living in a suburb, unless you can telecommute or are a farmer. I would, naturally, prefer to live in a more pedestrian friendly place, but that just ain't gonna happen.
Greenhouse gases are a really big, serious, more immediate problem - but stopping 'burb growth is IMO a big part of that solution, and has innumerous other benefits as well.
I think part of a solution would be to change the property tax system: some formula like house value * amount of road frontage * amount of land * land usage factor * service coverage, where land usage factor means that land left wild or gardens/farms are very low, and pavement is a huge factor. Basically, bringing some of the hidden costs of 'burbs up front to, and providing an economic incentive in a free-market economy to have the issue fix itself. And oh yeah, changing development regulations to make denser developments more attractive to live in, instead of just concrete boxes (ie green roofs, patios garden areas, etc).
It was Bush and his oil buddies seizing control of the White House that finally turned the light on that our society is essentially controlled by big oil - cars and the military being catalysts that support it. And our entire society, for the last hundred years, has been institutionalizing our dependence on it.
I live in the suburbs... I like it. My only gripe is that I have to drive through some heavy traffic to work. This one problem could be solved with some better infrastructure than we currently have. Although I think the suburbs exacerbate this problem, they are not the reason for it. Poor city planning is.
On the flipside, for the same cost house I would be living on top of my neighbor in the city. I would hate that worse. The city is also noisier. No thanks.
Oh yeah, I don't particularly find at least that my city is any more pedestrian friendly than the suburbs. I generally get a fair bit of exercise riding on the backroads, which I find to generally be safer than riding my bike in heavy traffic in town.
I don't try to tell you how to live your life, and it bothers me how self-righteous city-dwellers feel it's incumbent upon themselves to iradicate suburbia. You like to live in the city. I don't. Lots of other people feel the same way as I do. DEAL WITH IT!
Q: Honey does this dress make me look fat?
A: No, it's just the urban sprawl that does.
*ducks*
whats a home boy to do?
Spawl != Less walking opportunities. That's your social conditioning talking. You think Spawl -> pedestrian unfriendliness and pedestrian unfriendliness == people afraid to walk. But it doesn't have to be that way.
I've lived in two major American cities, as well as a smaller city. Right now I'm living in the Sprawl. Here's how it works: In a big city you can generally get everything you need for your day to day life within a short walking distance. Time is the most important factor. When it's easier for you to walk to the store than drive there, you'll walk. That's exactly what I did when I lived in the city. Now that I live in the Sprawl, I have to make a conscious decision to spend more time in an effort to maintain my health. Everything is so far apart that in most cases, it's faster to use a car.
In an ideal world, we'd all spend the extra time and walk everywhere. But most people are pressed for time, and will use the most time-efficient means of transport.
As an aside, it is also more difficult to walk in the Sprawl simply because the streets and walkways are often decidedly pedestrian-unfriendly. Drivers rule the roads. In cities, pedestrians generally rule the roads. It makes a difference. Sure, there are parks and paths and so on in the Sprawl, but you often have to drive to get to them, and they're set up not as part of the daily routine, but as means of escape from that routine. Not very practical for day to day use.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I was on a business trip to Washington DC and stayed at a hotel in the city - walked to the conference a couple times instead of the Metro, walked all over to go clubbing.
I liked it. It made me want to move there and have a house or apartment in the city.
seg fault
I'm sorry, but I have to comment on this (first post ever for me).
Everyone is saying how urban areas are great because they make you walk. That may be true.
Not everyone can afford to live in an urban area. I worked as a teacher for a school and I could barely afford to live in an apartment in Daly City (Worked in SF). Not to mention that food, gas, and everything else costs more in the city then outside it. So saying we should all live in cities seems a lot like saying no one should work a job that doesn't pay a ton.
I recently moved back to the Ypsilanti, Mi, where for half the price of living in Daly City I can take the bus to work and downtown in less than 10 minutes, and I can imagine being able to afford to own something as a teacher.
Oh, and I am fat. But that wasn't why I moved
Someone should be teaching Americans how to do Calculus. We want to be able to own something - come up with a way for me to be able to do that in a "non-sprawl area" as a full time teacher and I will stop feeling personally insulted by responses to articles like this.
[Oh and by the way, the cost of my transportation on the bart per mile is more than a car + road maintenance would be, and three times the cost per mile of the busses here in sprawl-ville]
Note that life in the country isn't uniform. I live in a small town in North Germany that has access to a major railroad line running between Bremen and Hannover - and it's a ten minute walk to the station. I can reach Bremen in under an hour, Hannover in under two. It's great for when you need to buy something the local stores don't carry or when you want to attend concerts or events like the Cebit and it's much cheaper to have a flat/house here than in the big cities.
If you're looking for a place to live there are many things to consider. If the city itself is too expensive for you a nearby (semi-)rural town with a good railroad connection and a price reduction deal with the railroad company might do the trick.
However, having a car is still very convenient in this situation.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
true, but urban dwellers have more repiratory problems. The biggest problem is asthma.
London is one of the only cities I've spent time in that I think does not require one to have a car.
"You're young, you're drunk, you're in bed, you have knives; shit happens." -- Angelina Jolie
That's the thing I wonder about how people live w/out cars...how do you get all your purchases HOME?? I mean, I've always had 2 seater sports cars, and I have a hell of a time packing in my groceries to get them all home, and I'm a single guy (I like to cook tho). I don't see how the hell you'd get all your purchases home if you had to carry them by hand...especially if the weather is bad.
I never used to worry about getting home after a few beers tho...I always knew where 'autopilot' on the car was.
But, seriously, how do you get big things back home that you buy? Food is a weekly thing for sure, but, what about other purchases?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Complacency and fitness may decline with lower population densities, but conflicts increase with density. There may be arguments focused on making better use of space and the effects on our well being, but after my last trip on the Atlanta transit system where some stupid teenage girl tried to pick a fight with me to impress her friends while my pregnant wife was sitting next to me and I outweighed her by a good 60 pounds of muscle, I'd argue that my efforts to keep people like that away from people like me allows both groups to survive.
There is more than one type of person - some of us, when stuck in large groups where high percentages are stupid and antagonistic turn violent on a dime to protect that which we hold dear. Can anyone really argue that excluding myself from urban "civilization" is "unhealthy"?
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
Damn, you haven't been to many European cities then? Even US cities aren't hard (NYC and Washington are ones I've spent a fair amount of time in).
Basically, I find that any city with a metro/subway/tube/whatever you want to call it is fine for getting around without a car. Seeing as I'm fairly fit from not having a car I suppose it's no big deal for me to walk a bit if necessary.
Over the past 6 years of travelling, it's only going back home to New Zealand where I've needed a car. Getting around other cities, to and from beaches in Europe, etc haven't been a problem with public transport and on the odd occasion where a car would be handy, I hire one or borrow a mates (such as holidaying in remote areas, going to music festivals or moving flat, in which case I can hire a small truck!).
Damn, I'm really surprised you haven't heard about online shopping (e.g. www.tesco.com)! For a few quid you can get all your weekly groceries delivered to your kitchen floor. I'd go down that route even if I had a car! :-) ) nip down to the corner store 1 min away, that or I pop into the supermarket on the way home.
I do admit, that sometimes browsing the food isles can't be beat, but I'm quickly put off by all the screaming kids and number of people.
For smaller day to day items (like milk, paper, booze
Oh yeah, and for any other one-off's (like a new TV that you really wanna order on the high st rather than online - which I still wouldn't do) then flag down a passing cab or hire a car. Still works out a lot cheaper than having your own car, paying for tax, parking, insurance, congestion charge, fuel, etc.
Oaw my gawd, the P'litcal C'rectness is a gonna get us! Help help run fer the hills!
Dont forget all those friends with cars who are oh-so-happy to let you bum yet another ride to buy some thing that you're too lazy to lug on a bus.
Goodness...how much extra does that cost? I wouldn't be comfortable with someone else picking out MY food...I like to look over the produce, pick out the best....when choosing meat, I look for the best marbled choice cuts...etc.
I also like to bargain shop...I usually do my shopping on Sunday morning...buy food to cook for all week (for lunches at work, and things I can quickly put together in the evenings when home from the gym). I often will look at the grocery store ads for the 2-3 stores around me...and I go get the things on sale at each store...plus a few other things. Things like that you can't really with online food shopping (if they even had something like that in the states where I live). Do they take coupons too? I will often hit the stores that might be doing double or triple coupons that week....I eat VERY well, but, I do it on bargain prices.
I also like to buy in bulk to save $$ and always have stuff I need at wholesale places like Sam's club...again, very hard to get stuff home that large on a bus or public transport. A gallon of mustard alone would be a PITA to get home that way?
But, seriously, lets say when I'm firing up the smoker, I often do a whole brisket, 3-4 racks of ribs...etc...and if I have friends over, even more...that would be a lot to get home without a car.
I suppose if you live alone, and don't cook much, sure it would be ok without a car, but, if you had a family you had to feed or if you even wanted to boil some crawfish for some friends (we can go through 2-3 40lb sacks of live crawfish easily on those days)....not easy to do that without a car, or even have room to do that in the center of the city.
PS. Heck, lugging home a case of beer could get tough too now that I think of your booze reference...man, I just don't know how I could live w/out a car...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
There are no sidewalks, no back roads that go through, no bike lanes[...]
First, I hope you were joking about the sidewalks, because riding your bicycle on the sidewalk is extraordinarily dangerous.
Bicycle lanes are advocated by people who mean well but know nothing about the science of traffic engineering. John Forester (the Effective Cycling guy) has loads of articles and scientific analyses that explain it all better than I can: www.johnforester.com/Articles/facilities.htm
A lot of the parks in the midwest where I live, have become havens for our ... ethnically diverse, drug-addicted, downtrodden and/or societally challenged citizens. Not a safe place for kids to play even with supervision. And playing on a rusty slide and squeaky merry-go-round fares quite poorly against playing DDR at the local mall.
Yep, some good points in there and I'm not saying that not having access to a car *ever* is a good thing. But having taxi's driving past frequently, busses driving past frequently, supermarket 5 mins away, off-licence less than 1 min away (which sells day-to-day groceries), several take-away food outlets and restaurants also less than a min away, life can be pretty easy without.
Last I looked, online delivery was £5 (shit, that's almost US$10 with the horrible exchange rate you currently have!!!) delivery for as much as you want to order. £5 isn't much more than cost of petrol, let alone parking fee if there is one and inconvenience of losing you close parking at your flat if you don't have your own spot. So I can and have ordered a few dozen beers, boxes of coke - months worth and don't even have to load/unload it into the car or indeed, carry it at all. You select a 2 hour time slot for delivery. They accept coupons too by entering in any coupon number (and electronically record and give you new coupons and discounts automatically). They always have sales online and often have sales you can't get at the supermarket! (really, you've never tried, have you, or perhaps the States does things differently?!).
Agree with wanting to pick out the best meat, etc and for nights when I want to cook I pop into the supermarket that I walk past on my commute home (you freeze your meat? I prefer fresh). For BBQ's I always nip down to the butcher/supermarket on the day, never order in advance. Again, if it's a hell of a lot and a stack of beer, order a taxi to get home or ask a mate or two to come with ya.
I do admit I don't cook at home these days hardly at all, always out with mates/girlfriend or playing in sports team. If I had a family to take care of then yeah, I'd have a car and suck up the expense. Don't think I could live without a car if I had kids.
When I first arrived in London there were 2 things I thought I'd really miss a) was the car and b) was the beach. I quickly found that a) having a car would be more of a very expensive liability, believe it or not and b) there are so many more things to do in London and indeed Europe, that I haven't missed living close to a beach.
That would disqualify most of the cities in the US (DC and NYC are exceptions, not the rule, when it comes to mass transporation). :-)
Some cities have good coverage in the downtown area (Atlanta has MARTA, which covers some of the city), but others like Minneapolis have VERY limited mass transit (light rail is fine as long as you're going between downtown Minneapolis and the airport or Mall of America, but buses are almost worthless unless you're going to/from the core city -- any sideways movement required several bus changes and multiple hours).
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
There's a lot of evidence that people's body weights have a set point where they will settle no matter how much they eat. Diet and exercise can keep someone's weight below their set point, but it's a constant struggle. You can't blame it all on lack of willpower or laziness because there's a biological component to it too. I exercise regularly, and I'm in pretty good shape, but when I've slacked off in the past I didn't instantly balloon up. My body weight just went to its set point, ranging from average in college to slightly overweight in my 30's.
Where you can blame sprawl is that junk food and lack of exercise allow more people to reach their set points.
Last summer I went hiking through the British countryside and managed some 550 miles and 40+ pubs. I came back feeling so good that I started to question why walking isn't a bigger part of urban design in the US. These are the highlights from my reading list -
/ dp/0385424345/sr=8-1/qid=1169657560/ref=pd_bbs_sr_ 1/104-0752558-7489538?ie=UTF8&s=books
M an-Made-Landscape/dp/0671888250/ref=pd_sim_b_4/104 -0752558-7489538
Edge City - http://www.amazon.com/Edge-City-Life-New-Frontier
You have to get the opposing viewpoint to understand a topic. Its fascinating to get the arguments for sprawl largely to see what they leave out.
Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape - http://www.amazon.com/Geography-Nowhere-Americas-
Many great ideas on the problems of urban sprawl but unfortunately few solutions.
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
A good book. It came out about the time I graduated from college with a degree in City and Regional Planning.
Oddly enough, while it was written as a part of a series of books focused on the built environment, the concepts are used in computer software design. Those who closely read the books about Design Patterns might remember the mention of Christopher Alexander's 'A Pattern Language'.
Not for me, as I tend to buy food every few days. I prefer it that way as everything stays fresh and I don't have to do much planning ahead! I admit I'm probably in a very small minority here, but it does mean I can usually fit all my shopping in my backpack to haul it home on foot. Helps that I work near the town centre so I can easily pop into a supermarket on my way back.
As for larger items... then it's a case of arranging a lift with someone who does have a car, getting a taxi or using home delivery.
I say we take-off and slashdot the site from orbit... it's the only way to be sure
Given the size of some of the mall parking lots, you could get a lot of exercise by parking at the perimeter of a lot and walking. Unfortunately, the lack of sidewalks from those outer reaches to the mall might make walking risky, especially if you are in an area that gets snow. And even if there is a sidewalk, it becomes a dumping ground for the snowplows.
There are a few places that actually have reasonable pedestrian access to amenities, though that access can be spotty. You have to look in 'progressive' neighborhoods, those places that people live in because of Quality of Life reasons. Frequently those places are areas that will rise up and fight big box stores like Wal-Mart.
I moved from a little town in the mountains of NC to Baltimore 16 years ago. While in Baltimore, where most things are within walking distance, I gained 40 lbs!! You could walk for most of life's necessities, but if you did, you took your life into your own hands due to the crime rate.
And don't even get me started on the air quality. My asthma took a downturn in a big way.
I'm back in NC now for a couple of years. I've lost 10 of the 40 pounds, and I'm working on that problem still. And while I have to drive to the grocery store and to work, I'm able to get out and exercise without worrying about getting killed....
It is entirely possible that my family is the exception rather than the norm. However, my point was we need to consider more than just city transportation systems when we compare obesity of urban and suburban people. At least in my family, we eat vastly different and during our teen years that had little effect on us since we were both getting a lot of exercise (though different types of exercise resulting in the suburban ones being more muscular and the urban ones being more wiry). As we aged, a lot of the aerobic exercise for the suburbanites diminished while we all continue to eat with the habits we were brought up with. We're talking a dinner of steak, potatoes, corn, cottage cheese and bread vs hamburger helper for a typical meal. I'd also like to see a study which compares quality of life between suburban and urban people in comparison to obesity.
On a side note, many slashdotters seem to think of young, smart, professional career people when they think of who inhabits the city. There is usually a larger number of of people, especially large broken families, living down in the ghettos instead of just Manhattan that need to be accounted for too.
Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.
If "smart-growth" is for dumb animals, then why are high priced highrise downtown condos being sold out BEFORE CONSTRUCTION BEGINS in places like Spokane, where you can find five acre lots within a fifteen minute drive of downtown?
In the US, a lot of people own a car and drive it often because they have no choice. If they want a good job and affordable housing, and still have a little bit of time to do things outside of work, they MUST own a car because the job and the housing are too far apart. A variety of things, including sprawl and mono-function zoning, have created an environment in the US where having a car is a near necessity, not an option.
Now smart people look at "smart-growth" as a way of cutting their costs while increasing their quality time. If you live in that downtown condo, and work nearby, you can get rid of your second and third cars and reduce your commute time as well as make it easier to get to the fun stuff after work hours. These 'real people' look past the hype of the car manufacturers and suburb builders and do what they want, not what the 'herd drivers' of Madison Avenue demand.
Of course, there are those car enthusiasts who live to drive. They should be promoting the "smart-growth" option because it would help clear the roads of commuters who would rather be living than driving.
I hear ya. Well, for me...it really is a matter of time, nutrition, and fun...
I'm single right now, and so if "I" don't do it..it won't get done, so that limits my free time. During the week, I get up early, take care of the dog, grab my (hopefully) packed lunch, drive 45-50 min to work (still haven't been able to move back across the lake into NOLA yet)..work all day, another 45-50 min(if no wrecks or fog across that damned bridge)...to the gym 4 days of the week...that's about 1.5-2 hours..home, take care of dog...eat, pack lunch for next day..watch tv for 1-2 hours.wash, rinse repeat.
So,my weekdays are pretty booked...and don't have time to cook, and I don't like junk food (trying to lose weight, and cost)..I'd rather save and blow some $$ on a fine meal with good service. I also happen to like to cook..so, I get up early on Sunday...I see what's on sale at the grocery store, and plan out what to cook based on that...usually the main meat(s) and veggies in season. I usually cook 2-3 main courses or maybe 1 or 2 of them are prepp'ed ingredients for putting together with other things quickly..like marinating and grilling chicken....grilled veggies. I can put those together quickly in the week for makeshift sauteed pasta sauces or jambalaya for instance.
Anyway, I cook up enough on Sunday, most all day...and put it up for lunches to take to work, and for quick meals on workout nights. That way, I eat healthy, and at a good cost.
When in my normal mode of living (interrupted by Katrina), I'd keep my big chest deep freezer well stocked (THAT was a bad site filled with meat and no electricity post storm, let me tell you)...so, some weekends, I'd only have to get a few things, but, on others...especially when things were on sale n bulk..I'd buy and freeze them. So, I often do buy things in quantities that would be impossible to do without a car or on public transport, even if they did have them around here in the US on a regular schedule and that also went near where you wanted to go....
With a busy schedule, and wanting to eat good food at a reasonable cost...I can't see not having a car. Besides...walking across that 28 mi bridge every day to go to work (plus more to and from bridge)..would get really old without a car.
And really...the only thing you get home delivery on around most of the US...is pizza or chinese food.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Define exercise.
I live smack in the middle of a major city and walk everywhere. I don't consider walking to be exercise. For me, walking is the way to get from point A to point B, the same way a car/tram/whatever is a way to get from point A to point B. I work out (Krav Maga + gym stuff) 8-9 times a week. That, for me, is exercise. It makes me sweat. It gets my heart rate up. It works my muscles. Walking around just doesn't do it for me.
On the other hand, there are plenty of people here smack in the center of the city, especially Middle Eastern and South Asian immigrants (and here especially the women), who are rather roly poly. They don't exercise, at least not the way I exercise; it's not a part of their culture. They eat a lot of sugar and other refined carbs. They use a lot of oil in their cooking. They have to walk around from point A to point B too. But it's not making them slim and fit...
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
It all comes down to two things: weather and easy access to outdoor recreation.
Cities full of skinny people tend to be those where there's always something to do and it's rarely too hot or too cold, whereas cities in flat places where there's nothing to do outside and it's hot all summer or frigid all winter tend to be full of fatties.
Suburban sprawl is pretty much the same no matter what part of the country you're in, but it's no coincidence that the fittest cities are places like Seattle or San Francisco and the fattest cities are places like Omaha and Houston. Hell, in Houston it's taxing enough to walk across a parking lot in the summer, let alone run five miles every morning.
I know a few people who live without cars. For day to day purchases like food, cloth grocery bags work well and get you cash back in some local stores. They do have to plan their shopping carefully. And most of them are either single or married without kids.
Big purchases tend to be things that they have delivered or ask for help from their friends with pickup trucks or vans. The frequency of these purchases is very low though. It is not like you go out every week to pick up the big screen TV or the leather livingroom set.
Personally, if you have a family, having a small, high gas mileage car that you don't use often is a reasonable compromise. My wife, who does the shopping, uses our car to do a major shopping expedtion once a week and the occasional mid-week 'specials' run. In winter, she drives it to work rather than risk breaking an arm on an icy sidewalk. She also does "Mom's Taxi" runs when the bus schedules leave the kids stranded. This live style choice has enabled us to function without having to spend huge amounts on personal vehicles.
For the bulky items, we used to use padding atop the car, with ropes to hold things in place. Most of those trips were short ones because we live near the stores where the items were purchased.
I will admit that, about four years ago, we bought a used mini-van that has been our cargo and passenger carrier. The purchase was to give us a camping vehicle for a twenty three day long trip that covered fourteen western states while hauling six people. Once the trip was over, the van, and its replacement, has been used for attending reenactments (American Civil War), hauling hardware and serving as a backup vehicle. But despite having it available, it is NOT used for commuting. Riding the bus is a lot more cost effective and easier on the nerves.
Does a fire engine have to be able to make a U-turn on a residential street? Do note that there are different lengths of fire engines. Some residential streets seem to be designed so that a hook and ladder fire engine could make a turn. Of course, the odds of that vehicle being needed in a suburban neighborhood with single story houses are slim. This is where rules can be senseless when they are applied to ALL areas.
There is also some problems with the wide roads when it comes to public safety. A narrow street with lots of cars parked on it tends to slow people down. Slower vehicles reduce the damage that occurs when accidents happen. I've seen statistics that say a pedestrian has a good chance of surviving an car accident when the car is moving at 20 MPH. When the speeds are 35MPH or higher, the pedestrian is as good as dead.
Then there is a cost that many people ignore. Streets eventually need repaving. Wider streets will cost more to repave.
In the states with no crosswalks, like Florida and Texas, all the pedestrians are undocumented immigrants, so it's really a way for La Migra to find their prey without doing any "racial profiling".
Australian sprawl? I've been to Australia, and you people need to get your asses in gear - I'd say at least 99.9% of the country has to be paved over. Sheesh, there are luxury home communities popping up on the Oregon Coast, or the Olympic Peninsula, some of the most godforsaken, isolated wilderness in the US, and when we complain about it being a long drive to the nearest intercontinental airport or WalMart, well, we fix things!
Now Eurpoe has been paved over for centuries, but driving there is so god-damned expensive unless you have a puny little toaster sized car I doubt nearly as many people have a 50 mi each way commute on gridlocked freeeways like Americans. I know they try - I was stuck for 2 hours on the GRA in Rome at 5PM on a Friday last time I drove in Italy (and escaped by driving 15 km on the shoulder!) But lots of work still to be done there. I guess people in Europe are either working close to home making Volkswagens or cheese or whatever, or have a cool little Vespa, or are unemployed.
I bought a condo in Northern California about 2 1/2 years ago. I am pretty much stuck with a pretty awful commute, but since I bought where I could afford to, and I need and like my current job, I don't see a viable alternative. The industrial complex where I work does have a very nice gym which I make use of everyday. The main drawback is that the complex is very far from anything else, so it's either eat what they have at the cafeteria(yuk) or drive into town and buy groceries periodically(which is what I end up doing) I choose to be healthy and I make choices specifically to further that choice. Where I live has little to do with that choice. I have a little home gym and I have a pass to parks in the local park system. I am active, not as a passive part of my life, but as an active part of my life. I take time to eat right and work out. I can't really rely on my walks to the store to keep me fit(I don't walk I drive). Ironically, the mall IS within walking distance as are a whole bunch of restaurants. I never eat restaurant food, because it is horrible for you. I do occasionally walk to the mall.
Bottom line is health is a choice no matter where you are. I think most people that I observe are just not making it a priority.
There was a time when movies had plots. So you knew who's ass it was, and why it was farting.
-Not Sure
I've been in many countries in Europe and also spent some time in the US and in Japan. My conclusion is that -- unless extremely wealthy -- a community can only support one primary mode of transportation. If most people drive to work then the road infrastructure will be pretty decent and public transportation horrible. If few people own cars it will be vice versa.
In Tokyo very few people drive, therefore they have plenty of cash to spend on subway and train tickets (which add up to a hefty sum by the end of the month). In most US cities people have cars and the market just isn't there for building a tram, or even for buying a fleet of buses (buses, btw, provide very little advantage over cars as they are subject to the same traffic and weather hindrances).
Some European cities get around this limitation by artificially injecting wads of taxpayer cash into the public transport infrastructure, so they can have functioning roads and public transport at the same time. But in the US very few communities would put up with this kind of "waste".
The problem isn't lack of activity, and it's not entirely from eating too much food - it's mostly from the types of food we DO eat too much of, and what gets put in those foods. Pasta, rice, bread, etc. are all bad news as they are all empty calories, they provide little or no nutrition (except where they've been fortified).
A baked potato sounds pretty good instead of that bowl of spaghetti, other vegetables are equally good, lean meat is good, and some fat is absolutely necessary as well (your brain needs it). Most of these provide basic nutrients of course, but they also provide plenty of vitamins and minerals. The lack of these is part of what leads to weight gain - without them, your body won't work properly, period.
Need butter flavor? Use the real stuff, it's far healthier than margarine... even those that claim zero trans-fatty acids still contain them in the form of [partially] hydrogenated oil. Do you really want a can of soda? Find one with Splenda or real sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup (and pay twice as much for it). Oh, check that bottle of salad dressing you use, and that ketchup, they have HFCS too, sometimes along with sugar. Love ramen noodles? Use half the package and add a can of vegetables (ramen noodles have absolutely no nutritional value by themselves.)
The biggest problem I see is money, which affects all of the above decisions. For example, my husband and I currently pay $493 rent for an ~800 sqft apartment (not near the water, and without even access to a pool), about $90 for electricity, about $50 for water/sewer/gas, $69 for car insurance, $45 for 7Mbps/512kbps broadband, and $45 for phone. That adds up to $831. Out of the $1130 we get a month (fixed income sucks), that leaves less than $350 to cover food, fuel for the car, car repairs and maintainance, sundries, clothing, laundry, computer repairs (lost a critical hard drive recently), medicine, and entertainment (mostly the occasional $5 DVD). I'm sure there are more things to add to this list, but I think you get the idea.
I read a study yesterday (which concluded in 1998, so it's kind of old) that clearly shows that the poorer you are, the fatter you tend to be. What's my point? Simple, we can't afford to buy truely healthy food, in the quantities necessary for a healthy diet, with all of the other expenses that have to be covered in some way from the money left over after paying the big bills, so we live on ramen, rice, hamburger, whatever we can get from food banks, pasta, and so on. Basically, whatever's cheap, and when it's cheap, it's generally unhealthy.
Physical activity helps, but it's not the answer, not when you have to exercise heavily for hours at a time every single day just to lose a few pounds a week. Besides, such long hours of exercise is unhealthy too, especially if you're more than a just little overweight (I am so overweight that if I tried this, I'd most likely have a heart attack, seriously). Physical exercise is good for toning and helping to raise your base metabolism, but it is NOT appropriate for losing weight, and I have had doctors tell me this in no uncertain terms.
A better question: If part of my body sprawls, am I fat?
Depending on the part, the chicks might say you're phat.
// This is not a sig.
Yeah, well, not all of us were able to get into Costco law school like you and your elite friends.
Stop whining. You obviously saved up enough box tops and gum wrappers to get your certificate.
If smart people liked living in urban jungles and living like rats in warrens, mass transit would not require massive subsidies at the taxpayers' expense in most places -- it would pay for it self and would attract private sector investors. Smart, successful people don't take the bus or commuter train if they can avoid doing so. Living situations that require mass transit are inefficient wastes of time. I certainly wouldn't want to depend on a city bus to take my kid anywhere on short notice, but driving my car works quite well almost any place I've ever lived.
People who oppose so-called "sprawl" are in denial -- they can't afford to live better lifestyles and want to drag others down to their level.
"You're young, you're drunk, you're in bed, you have knives; shit happens." -- Angelina Jolie
It's pretty simple. Eat more calories than you burn you get fat. Muscle is the engine of metabolism and a pound of muscle will burn 50 calories a day at rest.
Lift heavy objects and muscle will form. I'm 60 this year and I can curl 45# press 125# and squat 150#. I'm a strong SOB and because I have a strong metabolic engine I shrug off depression and the wear and tear of daily life. A couple of miles every other day for cardio and I'm in fine shape.
All this adds up to 30 min every other day and 10 min 4 or 5 times a week. About an hour + a week, it's not much.
It's obvious - bigger houses and yards mean you have to walk further to reach your car so that's loads of exercise. Bigger yards mean you can have bigger cars with enormous doors - opening those suckers really gives your arms a workout. Then there is the multistep climb into the car so that's good aerobic exercise. So I say Big 'Em On - bigger houses, bigger yards, bigger cars for more exercise and a healthy population.
For the last 17 years I have lived "downtown." And with that I either walked or rode a bike many places. A few years ago I moved to the suburbs for 3 of those years and had significant weight gain because I wasnt walking any more. I moved back downtown in part for weight reasons.
You said it yourself, you're 44 lb overweight, yet you can't seem to follow your simple formula. Ever wonder why?
It's because hunger is one of the strongest human stimuli. When we get hungry, we get irritable, cranky, and basically feel like crap until we provide the body with food. When we eat, the relief is immediate. That's why it's obvious that we need to eat less, yet we can't seem to do it.
On the exercise side, most modern exercise is incredibly boring. Jog on a treadmill. Ride a stationary bike. Row on a machine. Move heavy objects around, only to put them back in the same place they started from. It's little wonder people can't get psyched up to go to the gym.
So the fight is more about finding ways to control hunger and active activities that aren't boring. "Eat less, exercise more" trivializes that to the point of being a useless statement.
Some things that I found worked for me:
- Drink water. It'll make you feel full, it'll help your body function, and it'll make you feel better. Just don't end up like the Wee for a Wii lady.
- Don't eat quickly. Let your body tell you when it's satisfied.
- Don't eat often at restaurants. Their portions are far too big, and if the food is in front of you, your brain is wired to eat it (never know if there will be food available tomorrow. Better eat up!)
- Try not to eat overly processed foods. Your body is asking for more and more food because it didn't get the nutrients it needed to function.
- Don't eat lowfat foods. They're loaded with sugar, which is empty calories. Eating fats makes you feel full.
- Eat more fish. It's good for you, fills you up, and you won't be hungry again in an hour.
- Go outside and play with your kids/dog/salamander. Whose mind can stand jogging on a treadmill for an hour? Whose knees can stand that?
- Do a sport that you enjoy.
I spent 3 years of my life traveling for work, working late, and eating out every night. I gained over 30 lbs. I lost it in about 6 months following the advice above.They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Anoka?
Mpls. is walkable. Did you not notice the skyways?
At any rate, nothing can compare to the pain my ass was in after riding the public bikes for a while in Copenhagen. Nothing.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
I think the cause might be family with geography being less significant. One thing I definitely notice is weight gain associate with starting a family. Logically, having children reduces the time and the opportunity to lead a more active lifestyle. I think there is a general trend is to move to suburban areas to raise families. Suburbs and rural areas are generally more favorable to families with respect to schools and economics. With families, parents are older, dinners are larger, and regular exercise becomes scarce. So, weight gain is a consequence of family life and might be more apparent in suburban areas.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
An explanation for why there are so many obese people in Los Angeles!!! Glad to finally have that mystery solved!
For all execpt for the severly obese losing 5 pounds a week is not that healthy, and as you discovered, is unsustainable. Aim for a pound or two a week. That is 50-100 pound in a year! What you need to focus on is the long term. Planning on being a certain weight in x weeks is a recipe for disaster. Plan on being $healthyweight in a year or 2; that is the way to long term sucess. So for your case, don't go below 2000 calories a day, find the intake level that results in 1-2 pounds per week (or per month really, as long as you are moving in the right direction), and stick to that...
Also, if you are exersizing, that is like negative calories... Just view the human body as a control volume for thermodynamic analysis... It really is that simple, all the same laws apply.
-Tamman2000 (6'1" and dropped from over 230 to under 170 over the last 6 years, eating more than ever, running more than ever)
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
Farmers who work 16hrs a day/7 days a week eat diets filled with bacon, sausage, eggs, and corn. All of it cooked in real animal lard. They live long lives. They are usually physically powerful individuals without any substantial physical definition. Even changes in cholesterol theory don't explain this. The kind of excercise we get in a gym doesn't replicate the results. Just ask all the bodybuilders and runners dying at 65. What is the difference? Hell if I know but it certainly seems to be there.
That all sounds nice, but I don't know if it is true... I do know that runners have longer life expectancies than "average people", and (aneqdotaly) many of them that do die in their 60's come from families were making it past 50 is good (for instance jim fixx). If you have hard numbers on what you assert I would be very interested in seeing them. (see http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10039577/ for info on exercize and life expectancy).
Also, looking at nature I haven't found animals watching their diets. Other animals don't have any magic diet regulator switch instinct built in that the human animal does not. The natural habitat of most animals is certainly pretty sprawling. lol. I know of some predators that seem to dine almost exclusively on red meat and are quite healthy. The diets of animals in nature are diverse but they seem to have a few things in common. They all get quite a bit of natural, varied, excercise. Animals in nature are capable of storing fat (even if the vegetarians) for winter but otherwise aren't obese.
They keep breading until competition for the food keeps them thin... Capture a few squirrels, put them in enclosures with lots of easily reached food, and give vasectimies to all the males, they will get quite fat...
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
Simple, we can't afford to buy truely healthy food, in the quantities necessary for a healthy diet, ... so we live on ramen, rice, hamburger, whatever we can get from food banks, pasta, and so on. Basically, whatever's cheap, and when it's cheap, it's generally unhealthy.
There's a sidebar in my favorite cookbook, Nourishing Traditions, about a rat study in Brazil. The group of rats that was fed only corn and beans were a little skinny. The group of rats that was given a very small amount of animal protein (equivalent to a one sardine a day, for a human) were quite healthy.
There's a caveat about corn - pellagra (caused vitamin deficiency) is caused by eating too much, unless it's soaked in lime water - so I'd recommend a diet of beans, brown rice, and a wee little bit of animal protein. The beans should be soaked in water (With a wee little bit of an acid - lemon juice/vinegar/whey) overnight, to make them more digestible. Salt and dry herbs, to flavor things up a bit, are cheap too.
You can get fresh vegetables by sprouting. Mung beans/wheatgrass/radish seeds/sunflower seeds/etc.
The raw ingredients for food are quite cheap, Value-added processing makes eating expensive. It's much cheaper, and much healthier too, to do all the processing for one's self, than to pay someone else to do it. I like using paper plates to look for rocks in my dry wheat & beans...
As for the physical activity, the best kind is the kind you do. A short walk around the block is better than nothing doing nothing at all.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
If you don't mind my asking, how old are you? I used to be 115 lbs, and I'm 6'1". But I was 15... I was under 125 for a couple of years, trying to gain weight, but as an adult, I accidentally hit the 230's...
Also, if you don't mind my asking, just how skinny are you?
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
I thought this might be a contentious point; now I'm regretting not being more specific about it. I believe this mainly comes in to play when subdivisions have cul-de-sacs; otherwise, as other posters have noted, the truck can go around the block. The ability of a fire truck to turn around, however, is clearly also a product of the size of the truck. I've seen trucks in small streets in Switzerland, and they are correspondingly small. It seems to me that sizing all the streets to the firetrucks may make less sense than sizing the trucks to the streets. (I also suspect there are cases in which backing out is a realonable solution.)
You're right of course; the regulations are not all or entirely senseless. If you look at my posting history, you'll see I'm hardly one to claim regulations are all bad. The real problem here is that a style of suburban development has been codified in a set of rules that prevent the exploration of alternatives. That is starting to change; while we certainly need rules and coordination, I worry that the mentality that created the older rules will only result in new ones as inflexible as the old.
I'd think there'd be a lot of bike accidents and pedestrians falling down near a place called Chevy Chase.
That all being said, I'm not dissing Lexington. Of any city in Kentcuky, its in a dead heat with Paducah for liveability, and is actually considered on of the finest places in the world to live. Ranked somewhere between Osaka and Milan in the last survey I saw.
I didn't gain weight until I was about 19, which is not that much younger than 21...
Also, maybe it is because Texas is fatter than Illinois, or because the US has gotten fatter over the last 10 years, but I never had people telling me I was too thin once I got to 130 (and I am taller than you). You are a slim, but healthy weight, don't listen to anyone who tells you otherwise, unless you start losing weight.
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
Darn, I came *reaaaally* late for this discussion but I will comment nevertheless. My metabolism can not tolerate milk, in fact, any kind of milk related product, hence, I cant it milk, cheese, yogurt, sweet-breads, cakes, etc. I used to eat that when I was a kid and I liked sweet *a lot*.
On the first years I became aware of my "condition" I did not like it. You should realize that I cant eat pretty much anything. BUT after starting looking at the "alternative" options I became happier and happier. I drink Soy milk and every other product made with soy. Becoming *aware* of the alternatives for "healthy living" made me realize all the possibilities available.
I am not fat, in fact I am thin. I am 121.25 lbs (55 kgs)and around 5.4 feet in height. I KNOW it is possible to live and eat fine.
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