Do Suburbs Make You Look Fat?

http:/www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/08/blame-the-city/375888/?utm_source=atlfb

Dad coming home from work
scoop.it

Hello and Happy New Year Everyone:

Blogger is back after a restful New Year holiday and ready to go.  The new year brings resolutions like: stop smoking, random tweeting, lose weight, and so on.  Losing weight is the subject of the first post of the new year.  Have you or anyone you know ever asked you "Do I look fat?"  Word of advice, never step into that minefield.  Allow Blogger to re-phrase the question, "Do We Look Fat in These Suburbs?"  This is the question that James Hamblin asks in his 2014 article for an issue of The Atlantic.  If you pay close enough attention to people in dense cities and the suburbs, you will notice that dense city dwellers are more slender and have healthier heart than their suburban counterparts.  This may be due to the difference in the way suburban and urban streets are laid out.  Mr. Hamblin considers the question of what makes a healthy city.

The canal of Venice, Italy
wikimedia.common.org

James Hamblin begins with his experience as student in Venice, Italy:

A decade ago when I was studying in Venice, Italy,...,I did wear a pedometer.  It was for science.  I was part of a study that compared health behaviors in the U.S. and Italy-where people eat pasta and drink wine long into the night and never...I wore the pedometer reluctantly for a while in North Carolina, and then for while in Venice...People walk more in Venice...

It is incredibly difficult to drive in Venice-no cars and no roads.  Is that all it takes to make a city healthy.  Mr. Hamblin's professor Paolo, a native Venetian, never drove a car.  Amusingly, the poor professor did manage to fall into the stagnant sewage-filled canals.  The moral of the story, walk at your own risk.

Healthiest city designs, best to worst
Journal of Transportation and Health
theatlantic.com

In cities where there are streets, the impact of their layout on human health is not fully known.  However, as with other environmental factors whose health influence is not as apparent (e.g. trees), the effect of the urban grid might with worth a look.

Norman Garrick and Wesley Marshall, assistant professors of engineering at the Universities of Connecticut and Colorado, studied the effect of urban grids on human health.  Prof. Marshall told Mr. Hamblin than in previous research, they discovered that in extreme cases,

older, denser, connected cities were killing three times fewer people than sparser, tree-like cities on an annual basis.

To clarify, people walk and ride bicycles more in dense cities, "...but the research on actual ties to health outcomes is scant."  Therefore, the professors, along with Daniel Piatkowski at Savannah State University, undertook a larger study of how street layouts might influence human health.

The examined three fundamental gauges of street grids: density, connectivity, and configuration-in 24 cities in California and compared with various disease.  Their study was published in the 2014 Journal of Transport and Health.  In it, Professors Garrick and Marshall reported "that cities with more compact street network-specifically, increased intersection density-have lower levels of obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease."  In short, more intersections can lead to healthier people.

Professors Garrick and Marshall wrote,

It might not be common for people to explicitly contemplate health when selecting a place to live...but this research indicates it is worth considering.  (http://www.sciencedaily.com; date accessed Jan. 3, 2017)

James Hamblin adds, "And people are starting to consider it"

Three types of street networks:
Organic (Seville)
Grid (midtown Manhattan)
Hierarchical (suburban Atlanta)
Frank et al. Health and Community Design
melvilletalks.com.au

The original urban grid was really not a grid.  The original grid was "organic," the medieval layout common in many or Europe's randomly, still-thriving cities. This was followed, for centuries during and after the Renaissance, the rectilinear grid was ideal urban layout.  In the twentieth century, there was a complete overhaul-a move toward "...the branching tree model of the modern subdivision, which was optimized for the great horseless carriage."

Centuries of neatly compact and connected cities quickly gave way to the sparser "hierarchical" street grid.  This type of grid made the quiet cut-de-sac with room for McMansions with pools in every backyard.  In 2011, CityLab's Emily Badger wrote a scathing criticism of the cup-de-sac (http://www.citylab.com; date accessed Jan. 3, 2017), "the U.S. Federal Housing Authority published technical bulletins in the 1930s that 'painted the urban street grid as monotonous, unsafe, and characterless."

James Hamblin observes, "As with people, calling a neighborhood characterless cuts evermore deeply than calling it unsafe."

FHA redesign of a neighborhood in Pontiac, Michigan
nps.gov

Diagrams of grid and hierarchical neighborhoods in FHA publications bore the captions "bad" and "good."  The FHA's preference

evolved into regulation.  From the 1930s until the late 1980s, there were almost no new housing developments in the U.S. built on a simple grid

Professors Garrick and Marshall previously concluded that "people who live in more sparse, tree-like communities spend about 18 percent more time driving than do people who live in dense grids."  On a slightly morbid note, suburbanites die more readily-contradicting old research that concluded otherwise.  Research from the fifties focused on safety in cil-de-acs and revealed, as Prof. Marshall said,

You'll have fewer crashes in the cul-de-sacs.  Sure, you're safer, if you never leave the cut-de-sac.  If you take into account the entire city, you city might be killing more people...

James Hamblin reports, "68 percent of Americans are overweight or obese, which means that someone you know is overweight or obese."  Part of the problem is that most people do not get the Center for Disease Control's recommended amount of exercise.  The problem is that Americans spend more time in their car every year.  Thus, we can logically surmise, as Professors Garrick and Marshal do in their study,

The role of the street network and how we put together the bones of our communities should not be overlooked as a potential contributing fact to health outcomes.

Bicyclist on a suburban street
dailymail.co.uk

The professor concluded that wide multi-lane streets are associated with higher rates of obesity and diabetes.  This is likely an indication of what the professors say, an inferior pedestrian environment.  Similarly, the "big box" store in communities are indicative of poor walkability and linked to 24.9 percent higher rates of diabetes and a 13.7 increase of obesity.

Conversely, denser cities promote pedestrian and bicycling activities.   We can conclude that the drive for healthier cities is part of the current trend for more active lifestyles-as opposed to gym routines.  The point is physical activity is not connected to a specific time set aside for exercise and recreation.  It is about a way(s) of life.  "For some people, that's best accomplished by making things inevitably more difficult in everyday life."

Typical cut-de-sac
houstontomorrow.org

In a statement to the press, Prof. Garrick said,

Taken together these findings suggest a need to radically rethink how we design and build the streets and street networks that form the backbone of our cities, towns, and villages...The research is one more in a long line that demonstrates the myriad advantages of fostering walkable places....

Prof. Marshall told James Hamblin,

It's nice to make more of these connections...but it's hard to say that these kinds of neighborhoods cause good health...

One caveat, correlation is not causation.

James Hamblin points out, "It's true that people who like to walk and bike might be choosing to live in denser neighborhoods, and that may be all there is to this relationship."  However, "there a lot of people who don't really have a choice where they live.  They can't afford to live in the hearts of big grid cities."  Prof. Marshall continued, A lot of poor people are getting forced out of the walkable urban scene.  Currently, in a reversal of the "white flight" of the fifties, cities are experiencing gentrification that is pushing out low- to moderate-income neighborhoods.

Children are also stranded, who frequently do not have the luxury of walking to school.  They have to use the bus.  James Hamblin poses this question, "So are health factors influencing city planning?"

Professor Wesley Marshall said,

There is a push in that direction, but I still wouldn't say it's really integrated in what people are doing...If you're looking to buy a new house, I think very few people are cognizant that there might be long-term health differences between one neighborhood and the other.  You might hear about it in terms of things like fracking or living near a highway.  The obesity epigenetic is becoming a national crisis, but almost nobody connects that with neighborhood design.  The connections we're making there are all about food and exercise.  But if we build neighborhoods where exercise is part of people's daily routine, you would think that could go a long way.

Do denser urban grids equal better health?  This is a question that researchers continue to study.  The conclusions that they find will have significant impact on federal, state, and local policy issues such as: healthcare, transportation, infrastructure, and so on.  When someone asks you "Do I look fat?"  Answer them, it depends on whether you live in a place with a grid or a hierarchical street network.