Study: Sprawl linked to chronic ailments

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

LOS ANGELES -- Warning: Suburban sprawl may be hazardous to your health. A report released Monday found that people who live in sprawling metropolitan areas are more likely to report chronic health problems such as high blood pressure, arthritis, headaches and breathing difficulties than residents of more compact cities.

The difference - which remained even when researchers accounted for factors such as age, economic status and race - may have something to do with the way people get around in more spread-out cities.

"People drive more in these areas; they walk less," said Roland Sturm, co-author of the report by Rand Corp., a nonprofit research group.

The report suggests that an adult who lives in a sprawling city such as Atlanta will have health characteristics similar to someone four years older, but otherwise similar, who lives in a more compact city like Seattle.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apscience_story.asp?category=1500&slug=Sprawl%20Health

[jumpstart33]

1. It's the traffic, stupid!!! Raises pressure, causes muscle and joint

problems, and make people generally unhappy. That's why I am pushing for some talking point by Kerry on the issue of municple and interstate traffic problems and some talk about a national rail transportation infrastructure of some kind to help reduce our dependency on foreign oil. But them...I'm much too farsighted.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. Yup

Lack of exercise, coupled with the unnatural postures one is required to maintain while driving long distances (before I became reaccustomed to driving after moving to Minneapolis, I got backaches and shoulder aches from sitting behind the wheel), plus the bad air quality INSIDE a car that's stuck in traffic, not to mention the temptation to subsist on offerings from drive-thru windows because you're "too tired" to cook. Need I add the reduced social interaction among neighbors, the "tiredness" that causes people to vedge out in front of the TV instead of getting involved in the community...

Then there's this:

http://www.newcolonist.com/rr11.html

[AndyTiedye]

3. Better in the Boonies than Suburbia

I seem to be in better shape now that I live in the boonies.
Lots of good mountain biking out here.
I telecommute most days, which keeps the driving down to a
bearable level. If I lived in the city I'd have a much longer commute.
All the good computer jobs are out in the burbs.
There seem to be thousands of people reverse-commuting from
San Francisco. They live in the most compact city in the West,
but they have to drive long distances to work in Silicon Valley
(longer than me!).

A lot of people live in suburbia because they work there, but then
you have to drive everywhere and there is nothing but offices
and strip malls nearby (nearby if you're driving, good luck getting
across that 8-lane boulevard on foot).

"Find a job in the city", one might say. Did that. Four times.
Good computer jobs in the city tend to move out of the city
with annoying rapidity. Most of the time I lived in the city, I
had to commute out to the suburbs by car to work! I moved out of
the city to shorten my commute.

I'm not sold on the cities = community argument.

The only place where we've been able to become part of the community
is this tiny unincorporated place we live now in California.
It has a population of 1000.

Back in New England (where I used to live),
you weren't really part of the community
unless your family had been living there for generations.
New England towns are funny that way.

My experience of living in the city had the opposite problem --
no community because everybody was moving all the time.
The ethnic neighborhoods have their own communities, of course,
but each of those is really only open its their own ethnicity.

Community requires stability. The reason it exists where we live
now is because people who move here tend to stay.

Of course, getting people out of their cars requires them to move
every time they change jobs -- which tends to doom any efforts
at building community in an era when people have to change jobs
so often. The two-career couple is a particular challenge here --
one that tends to be ignored by those who are nostalgic for the days
when "everybody lived in the city (or the company town) and walked
to work".

The real solution is to make public transportation that works.