Can Architecture Make You Fat?
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 01. 4.07
We used this image from the late, lamented Sploid before in our post asking if cities can make you fat. Now in the UK we find that architects and planners are beginning to look at the way buildings contribute to a sedentary lifestyle, obesity and ill health. "Tim Townshend, a Newcastle academic and former town planner, is one of those suggesting that our public spaces - our cities, suburbs, shopping centres - are enforcing a culture that consumes energy without expending it, encouraging inactivity and poor eating habits. One of Townshend's more frivolous suggestions is that we make stairwells a more attractive option by fitting them with piped music (although it's this, arguably, that made lifts loathsome in the first place)." TreeHugger fave Will Alsop is, as always, provocative. ""If you really wanted to do something about it," he says, "you could take all the elevators out of all the buildings in London. Then people would be fit."
That, besides the number of gyms and liposuction clinics, is why New Yorkers are skinny compared to the nation as a whole. "In very dense urban environments, you get local shops and facilities mixed up together," says Townshend. "People tend to use those more. There's an awful lot more walking involved, just because of the inconvenience of driving." High-density housing, in other words, can help create what is known in the trade as the "eco-slob" effect, whereby the healthy, environmentally friendly option is also the path of least resistance."
In the States,"Dr Reid Ewing of the University of Maryland published a paper on the relationship between suburban sprawl and health. His nationwide study offered the first direct evidence that adults in low-density, car-dependent housing weighed more, walked less and were more likely to be obese. Meanwhile, a study of 1,100 Atlanta residents carried out by Professor Lawrence Frank of the University of British Columbia reported a correlation between driving and weight gain. According to his findings, each additional hour spent in a car per day is associated with a 6% increase in the likelihood of obesity.
So could architects and planners halt the nation's obesity crisis? They can certainly help, but all the intelligent architecture in the world won't stop people from popping to the corner shop in their SUV to pick up a multipack of Hula Hoops. Which means we're back to the idea of the eco-slob: the healthy option has to be made the easiest option.
"We want to change people's behaviour," says Amelia Lake. "It's very difficult if our environment doesn't encourage that"." ::Guardian via ::Archinect
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Please, let's not forget the millions of people who (sometimes or always) need to use elevators.... because they use wheelchairs, walkers, crutches, strollers, or transport anything on a wheeled cart between floors. Green or other innovative architecture need not be inaccessible. Indeed, it is a great opportunity to implement Universal Design from the ground up. Not to mention, follow federal building codes that mandate accessibility.
For more information, please see
http://disstud.blogspot.com/2007/01/demonization-of-elevators-and-their.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_design
Good point. But for the majority the culture of convenience really means that all our energy slaves (car, elevator, auto doors etc.) are designed to hide and disguise their energy use very well. Which means that no-one really understands how dependent they are on these things. And in a well-off country you generally never have to choose the more tiring option.
If it was obvious how much less energy you consumed by walking (moving 70kgs) compared to driving (moving 70+1500kgs), the huge dependency would be clear.
Lack of music is not the problem with stairwells. Most are as ugly as possible since no one was intended to use them except to escape a fire. They are generally filthy. Although the upper floors will have a big "EXIT" sign, the ground floor may be unmarked, with no way to even find the stairs unless you've already come down them and turned around to look at what the door looks like. Often they are very narrow, too narrow for people ascending and descending to pass each other easily.
At least where I work the stairs in the newer buildings look as though they were intended to be used, and while they can't widen the stairways in the old buildings, they have somewhat improved the appearance. Hotels are invariably dreadful, though, even though hotels generally also lack sufficent elevator capacity to handle the demand, so that even the less athletic will use them just to avoid the wait. Even so they refuse to clean them, let alone paint them or put up clear signs.