I can see your house from here.
Posted on 09/27/2004 7:20:38 AM PDT by traumer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Living in the suburbs may have once been part of the American dream but it can lead to nightmares such as high blood pressure, arthritis and headaches, researchers reported on Monday.
An adult living somewhere like Atlanta, with its spread-out suburbs and car-heavy culture, will have a health profile that looks like that of someone who lives in Seattle -- but who is four years older, the study found.
And the culprit seems to be exercise, or the lack of it, the researchers report in the October issue of the journal Public Health.
"This is the first study that analyzes suburban sprawl and a broad range of chronic health conditions," said Roland Sturm, an economist at the Rand Corp.'s Rand Health unit who helped write the study.
"We know from previous studies that suburban sprawl reduces the time people spend walking and increases the time they spend sitting in cars, and that is associated with higher obesity rates. This probably plays an important role in the health effects we observe."
The differences between city and suburban people held even when Sturm's team took into account factors such as age, economic status, race and the local environment.
"To improve our health, the study suggests that we should build cities where people feel comfortable walking and are not so dependent on cars," said Deborah Cohen, another Rand researcher.
There was no link between suburban sprawl and mental health. The RAND team found no differences in the rates of depression, anxiety and psychological well-being between people living in downtown areas and those in suburbs.
The Rand team looked at a survey of 8,600 people funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. These people, living in 38 metropolitan areas across the country, were asked a variety of questions about their health and well-being in 1998 and 2001.
It defined sprawling suburban areas as those with poorly connected streets such as cul-de-sacs, separated areas for schools, housing and shops and a lower population density.
The most extreme examples included the Riverside-San Bernardino region of California, Atlanta and Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Dense urban areas where people lived close to each other and the schools and shops included New York City, San Francisco and Boston.
I'd rather live in the suburbs of the United States than anywhere else on earth.
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Yep.
Hmmm. Cities = Democrat leanings... Suburbs = Republican leaning...
Hey let's come up with a reason to make more cities!!!
Correction..........Crushing debt makes you sick. If you buy a house and finance $150,000 of it, demand two new cars and finance them, then live in fear of the items you had to have, well that's no surprise.
After having seen the word "obesity" earlier in the article, the source of funding came as absolutely NO surprise to me.
Commuting leaves you too tired to exercise - or do much of anything else on wweknights.
I can see your house from here.
Correction...... Crushing debt makes you sick.
I agree with you here.
Ok, let's recap. These guys say no drinking, no smoking, no fatty foods, no living in suburbs. What next!?
I grew up in the country (literally a swamp)...
I have lived in a city and felt I would die from the trapped feeling.
I lived in the suburbs and felt less trapped, but I still felt crowded and was freaked at the total loss of privacy.
I moved back to the swamp, drive into the city to work, then return home to be has happy as I was when I was a kid.
No s... either
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Actually, you can see Bill O'Reilly's house from here...that's Levittown circa 1952.
Living in big cities can lead to gunshot wounds.
But of course doing any of those things in the inner city is not permissible. So I guess I'll take the stress.
Let's not give them any more "bright" ideas.
As far as I am concerned outfits such as RWJF are a menace to society, and particularly to free enterprise and the "American Dream."
I'd rather live in my 100 year old, non-suburban residential area (also conveniently located in the United States) than in a suburb. Life is far more relaxed where I am. It's just a fact of life.
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