Read this and tell me what you think.
I think:
– when I go visit friends in unwalkable cities (like Canberra, or my ps in Hobart, who live in Rose Bay across the river from Hobart proper) I do less walking and don’t like it.
– when we baby sit friends’ cars I automatically drive more and bike less.
– I ride my bike everywhere and seldom walk. This is a more efficient mode of transport, which means I actually get less exercise.
– you have to drive everywhere when you live in the outer suburbs – things are further away and the traffic moves faster on the emptier streets so it’s scarier to ride your bike.
– there are no interesting alleys in the suburbs.
– there are ‘nature strips’ (isn’t that a funny term?) in the suburbs, and none in the city. I don’t understand why.
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they need to think about their variables a little more. So far they have density/sprawl, activity/inactivity, fat/not-fat. A few others that are obvious from the article include:
1) nutrition and diet in the context of the distribution of eateries and fast food
2) different types of physical activity (ie a qualitative appreciation of excercise not a quantitative measurement), includes everything from work to fun events
3) demographics of class, gender, ethnicity, etc
The “choice argument” is nonsense. What if a fat bastard has only ever lived in the suburbs? and has lived in a culture where bad easy food and little physical excercise is tolerated? instead of thinking it is a good thing for obese people to be obese the urban areas should be designed to encourage less obesity. ‘Choice’ is a furhpy.
I walked everywhere in Sydney when I lived in Surry Hills, but rarely rode my bike because the traffic was scary and there were very few bike paths.
Now that I live in Canberra I don’t walk very far, but I did ride my bike a lot (until my tummy got too big) because the bike paths are fantastic.
Ideally I would combine the bike paths of Canberra with the walk-ability of Sydney.
Canberra is kind of interesting – it’s got lots of bike paths, is difficult to drive in and has a lot of outdoorsy activities quite nearby (bushwalking, hiking, etc etc).
I think Glen’s point about other variables is important, particularly in terms of class (which I suspect might be more important than the studies in that article allow for). I’m also suspicious of the idea of class.
Incidentally, I’ve just been reading some stuff by Barry Wellman (who does neat stuff on online/offline communities) and he’s done some research on a community they called ‘Netville’ in Canada near Toronto, where many residents had free, high speed internet access. Wellman notes some interesting effects, and the one that caught his attention was the way the online residents’ were more into ‘communitas’ than other residents. Because they were connected online, they tended to do more social things as groups. One of Wellman’s examples was an open invitation for a bowling league.
This (in a roundabout way), emphasises the role that community and social networks play in encouraging people to be more active (socially and physically).
So Frank in the Sciencenews article thinks that restaurants nearby are great for encouraging him to walk. Once we get past the whole issue of having the money to eat out and the availability of food that’s good for you (ie more diverse food resources), I wonder how important it is to be a social person to utilise those sorts of resources? To have social infrastructure that makes it easier to go out? He might be eating alone every night, but I suspect that if you have friends or family to do all these walk-to-able things, you’re more likely to take advantage of these resources.