US Cities Make You Fat
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 06.19.06
As Brad Pitt pointed out in Design:e2, dense, urban, walkable cities consume less energy per person than any other kind of environment. It turns out that all that walking keeps you skinny too. Researchers are finding that suburban dwellers are significantly fatter than their urban counterparts, primarily because they drive everywhere, even to the fitness club. "In a livable city, it should be possible and pleasant to reach restaurants, shops and entertainment on foot. Those who insist on riding bicycles should be able to do so safely and find bike racks on every street. An efficient subway or light-rail system not only makes it cheap and easy to get around town while legally drunk, it also provides more walking opportunities from home to station and station to destination." ::Sploid and here is a list of walkable American cities.
What's with the ESCALATOR leading up to and down from the fitness centre????? Please, give me a break.
Wait. San Antonio?!?!? I grew up in SA, lived there for 25 years, and it is the LEAST walkable city you'll ever see. The riverwalk is just a stripmall with a river through it (if you call a 4 foot deep man made creek a "river"). SA is enormous, with an awful bus system. By car it takes 20 minutes to get anywhere. It's horrible, suburban sprawl as far as the eye can see.
Define 'city' in this context. I live in the oldest inland city in the United States, and I walk just about everywhere, along with a lot of other folks. Does it have to meet a certain population requirement?
Both NYC and Washington DC are known to have some of the worst traffic in the US, much less the world. I used to live in the DC area, and I did take the bus and metro to work during my early years there, but relatively few employers are in the accessible downtown area.
I now live in Austin, and my in-laws live in San Antonio. Maybe you can get around a few places downtown by walking, but they're both so spread out that you can't get anywhere else without a car.
A number of years ago, I did a business trip to Hawaii. Sure, if you're staying at the hotel on the beach, you probably don't need a car if that's all you're going to do. But if you want to go snorkeling, morning in Haunama Bay is the place to do that, and that's on the North side of the island -- you'll need a car to get there. Same if you want to go whale watching. My co-worker and I had a car because we had to drive to the center of the island to the place where we were working, and judging by the size of their highways (yes, even "Interstate Highways"), I have to believe that this is not uncommon.
Hey Lloyd - the link to the original list and the selection criteria doesn't work. I'd love to see how they chose these 12 cities...
This is one of the reasons I'm very happy to be moving to Boston next week (not that San Francisco isn't also a great walking city...).
Want to see better mass transit and less sprawl? try banning cars in cities, so what if it'll never happen. i can dream cant it.
It's nice to blame cars and poor public transport for obesity and poor health, but they are only factors in a much more complicated problem. Example: New York is obviously one of the most walkable cities, but the Bronx, which has good subway and bus service, has much higher rates of obesity, diabetes, etc., than Staten Island, which has a predominantly car culture. Walking is a great way to stay fit, but diet and other lifestyle choices are just as important. And to look at it another way, bringing more public transportation to other cities, reducing car usage and making cities more walkable isn't going to be a magic bullet for America's obesity problem.
I second Justin's comments on San Antonio. I went there for a convention, and walked only once to River Walk, which is essentially a long skinny frat bar with a stream running through the middle of it. The only good thing I can say about the sprawl is that it protects the truly cool parts of SA from the ravages of condomania, as we are suffering here in Chicago.
How in the world is San Francisco not on that list? It's easily number 2 after New York. San Diego is almost as bad as San Antonio, thought they've made some progress with light rail there.