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[Myrddin]

As recently as 1969, 69 percent of all children walked to school.

When did the lefties begin forced busing for "integration"? Kids walked to neighborhood school until these social engineers started meddling. Now, they bitch about a problem of their own making. Typical.

[OBone]

Sprawl is another "Al Goreism". It's herd them back into the city and make them live where we decide is best for them. People flee to the surburbs because of bad schools, crime and high taxes. Being able to own property and use that property as you like is a basic American right. It's all about control.

Boston has one of the largest commuter train and subway systems in the country, yet the roads are clogged every day.
Most commuter train stops has parking for $1 or $2.50 a day and there is frequent service to outlying cities as far away as Worcester and Providence, RI. It ain't gonna happen, but billons of taxpayer monies will be spent trying.

[WL-law]

Ironic in that 1969 was just before "forced busing" became the rule dejure in Boston.

School Committees were declared racist due to their pattern of locating schools within existing local neighborhoods, in other words, neghborhood schools, because that fostered a de facto segregation in the school system (since the neighborhoods themselves were typically either white or black, e,g, South Boston veresus Roxbury).

So the judicial answer was to (a) bus students out of their neighborhoods (short-term solution) and (b) locate new schools on the perimeter of adjoining neighborhoods.

This is not "news" to the Globe, since they advocated this. So -- the 'critique' of the unintended effect they isolate here -- obesity -- is stated in an intentionally "oblique" relative to the circumstances of its causation. And hence you see the Globe's capacity for self-criticism -- its non-existant.

[ricpic]

The Globe is so terribly concerned with our health. Of course, the best thing you can do to safeguard your own health is to not read the Globe. Anyone with an ounce of sense, who was to take this article seriously, would experience a fifteen point rise in his blood pressure.
Luckily, most Americans continue to aspire to a free standing home of their own, with some ground around it. So the lefts dream of squeezing us back into worker's housing, huddled around the mill (read State school) will not succeed.
Notice that it IS the government's business (active) that we walk and ride bikes more. But it is NOT the government's business (passive) that our children are safe walking to and from school. The world turned upside down.

[FITZ]

All people need to do is check the sex offender lists on the internet and they can see why it's foolish to let their kids walk to school.

[eno_]

We must herd the serfs into smaller areas! They are too hard to control when they spread out!

[NYpeanut]

Definition of sprawl: Whichever house was built after mine.

[Kay Ludlow]

Sprawl is an aesthetic issue to many, and a religious issue to gaia worshippers. As far as obese children (and adults) seems to me that there's some correlation with the food pyramid. You know, that scheme to get people to minimize eating meat (offends the evironmentalists) and eat more grains. The school lunch programs are all geared to the food pyramid now, and at recess actual excersize is very limited (so no one gets hurt), unless it's team-building activities... Thanks for the ping - the anti-sprawl people really get on my nerves. They are spreading from the cities to the rural areas insisting on growth boundaries around every little town and village. They want make all our communities into little identical utopias, which is anathema to us rugged individualists! The EPA is helping them too - EPA Greenkit

[E Rocc]

"Sprawl" is what individuals do left to their own devices. Put 100 random people on a football field and they will spread out, into small clusters. They won't voluntarily crowd themselves into the end zone for no reason.

Of course, spread out populations are harder to control, so "sprawl" is evil and government has to "do something" about it.

P. J. O'Rourke had some good comments about anti sprawl" measures.

-Eric

[backhoe]

this link?

-The Thoreau Institute Urban Growth and Transportation Studies--

has a lot of info & opinion refuting the "urban sprawl," "Lite rail/mass transit" and related items...

And more here:

-Independence Institute--"Rights" Research

[RightOnline]

"In 1996, the surgeon general reported that a sedentary lifestyle is a primary factor in more than 200,000 deaths each year, about 10 percent of all deaths in the United States. Diabetes, cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, and some cancers are all related to physical inactivity, which the report said is second only to smoking as a lifestyle risk factor for disease."

Gee. I get it. "Suburban sprawl" is responsible for "sedentary lifestyle" and this list of various maladies.

Where DO these droolers come up with this stuff? Do they not realize how truly ridiculous they look to the rest of us??????