Gallup has gone looking for the commonalities among America’s most obese metropolitan areas. Here’s the top ten:
The study covers the usual suspects, e.g. poor eating habits and lack of exercise. But here’s something they overlooked: access to (or willingness to use) alternative transportation, i.e. burning calories instead of carbon.
In Montgomery, Ala., for example, data from the 2000 Census shows that 1.7 percent of the population walked to work. But that figure drops to by nearly half to .9 percent in the 2006-2008 Community Survey.
What about Stockton? Same. Less of a drop, but still a drop from 2.2 to 1.9
Visalia/Porterville? Same. Down to .7 from 2.1.
A pattern? Check it out for yourself.
Except for places such New York City, the percentage of people walking to work is going to be low across the U.S. just because we’ve built this country to accommodate the automobile and used zoning laws to create urban monocultures. I’m wondering, however, in a decade of economic stress why walking numbers would go down. Shouldn’t they be going up? When a community’s number of foot-commuters drops by half in less than a decade, does that suggest a lack of access, poor facilities, cultural factors?
The number of walkers could be going down based on business patterns. For example, if your factory job — the one you used to walk to — got shipped to Mexico, then you may be stuck driving to your job at McDonald’s out on the edge of town next to the Walmart. You wouldn’t be bicycling there because 1) your town probably has no bicycle education program, and 2) the suburban arterials are scary as hell (until you know what you’re doing).
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So, you think factories used to be in the middle of cities and walmarts and mcdonalds are responsible for sprawl?
How often do you find yourself having to go to the outskirts of springfield to find either of those stores?
Posted 03 Mar 2010 at 12:47 pm ¶Robert… Springfield isn’t on the list
But, generally speaking, that does accurately describe many urban areas in the U.S. — not the part about McD’s or Walmart being “responsible.” Those companies are merely reacting to the living/business patterns.
I am assuming something that I probably should not assume, but I’m going to do it anyway: that most people who walk to work (outside large urban areas such as NYC) are probably poor or working class.
That assumption is probably way off base for Springfield because we have so many colleges with reasonable neighborhoods close by. I would guess that many of Springfield’s walkers are college employees.
My point here is merely that I think Gallup should look at the role of transportation in fat city. I don’t think it plays a big role. But I gotta wonder when those participation numbers go down.
It would be cool to discover where Columbia sits. I suspect we might find that it’s a fairly lean town. And I have to believe that PedNet’s efforts play a role.
Posted 03 Mar 2010 at 1:04 pm ¶I think factories used to be common in the centers of historically industrial cities (eg, Pittsburgh). The pollution from these was, as I understand it, part of the impetus for people to move out to the then newly-forming suburbs.
Also, WalMart IS in a sense responsible for sprawl because it builds stores with such large retail footprints that they must include an outrageous number of parking spaces out front. What word besides sprawl would you use to indicate all that space that sits unused (except right before and after our annual shopping binges)? I guess zoning laws really are to blame but there’s little immediate hope of changing them for the better.
Posted 03 Mar 2010 at 3:12 pm ¶Hey, at least most Wal Marts have bike parking. I can’t say the same for a lot of other places.
I see towns still putting in infrastructure that actively discourages pedestrians and all but “toy” bike riding.
Posted 03 Mar 2010 at 8:13 pm ¶I grew up outside of York, PA. Obesity was noticeable there 30 years ago.
It was a major industrial town. And yes, many of the factories were in the urban core.
The standard diet there is Pennsylvania Dutch — heavy meat & potatoes.
Posted 03 Mar 2010 at 8:39 pm ¶Keri… And in Montgomery I’ll bet they make some good biscuits n’ gravy
Yes, I think diet plays a big role as the Gallup results suggest. But it seems to me that being able, or encouraged, to walk it off would help.
Posted 03 Mar 2010 at 9:44 pm ¶Part of it is placing a value on activity in general. Active transportation being a worthy outlet, for sure!
Posted 04 Mar 2010 at 3:03 pm ¶Keri… I’m thinking “Walk It Off” would make a good title for a website on this topic. Oooops, someone already did it
http://www.walkitoff.com/
Posted 04 Mar 2010 at 4:11 pm ¶What I found most shocking is that a slight majority of the USA’s population reports not getting weekly exercise. Where exercise is defined as 30 minutes of physical activity three times a week.
I find it hard to imagine a lifestyle that is so sedentary that 30 minutes of physical activity three times a week doesn’t happen just doing normal daily life.
Posted 04 Mar 2010 at 8:04 pm ¶Kevin… No kidding. I get that much just walking around campus.
Posted 07 Mar 2010 at 12:44 am ¶I’ve been to Flint, in fact, I interviewed there two years ago and the city was extremely walkable. They had nice sidewalks and a very walker/biker friendly downtown. Quite honestly one the best alternative option cities I’ve seen. They also had a lot of people on foot, bikes, and buses which I saw for myself. The metropolitan area was filled with some of the nicest people that I’ve ever met, but there was also a heart-breaking level of poverty and I might even say hopelessness. To my knowledge there are few suburban chains in Flint… in fact there are almost none in that whole corridor down into Detroit.
My time in Montgomery was similar. Very nice people, very high levels of poverty and low-access to quality food.
The CA cities are also hard hit – by housing crisis… in fact, these cities share in common a brutal poverty…
If walking and riding bikes was the issue versus car riding… wouldn’t people in ghettos be in fabulous shape? I think the issue here is poverty and a climate of hopelessness.
Posted 07 Mar 2010 at 5:30 pm ¶