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.
For perspective, there only two places for an expanding population to go: out or up.
Mark this excellent post for future reference
I ate a little in France. Their version of McDonald's was so fresh and the cheese was really good. I stayed away from the restaurants because the prices STARTED at fifty euro in many places FIFTY!!!!! The food wasn't that great in Venice but then I didn't eat in any restaurants there either. The Burger King was good there, freshest condiments and cheese ever. Why is the cheese so good in Europe? I wonder. But yes you could immediately pick out the Americans at the Burger King as Venice has no fat people, maybe .0000001% *LOL*
The reason commuters spend so much time in cars is that the government does such a lousy job of building roads. Where I live in the suburbs, there is only one freeway into the city and when there is one accident somewhere along the way the traffic is held up everywhere.
People around here have the odd view that roads create traffic. I was watching a debate between local candidates a few years back and they were asked if they were in favor of a new road that would have served as a handy local alternate to the only freeway we have. They were unanimously opposed to it because they feared that people would actually drive on it and traffic would occur. The anti-growth environmental wackos have made "traffic" such a dirty word that we have come to the point that so little road construction occurs that all roads are clogged with cars going so slowly and inefficiently that they are contributing much more pollution than they would be on an efficient road system.
I discovered that if you try to speak french then French people are very nice to you. They gave very good clear directions in english *lol*
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