Is Suburbia Killing Us?

As national and North Carolina overweight and obesity rates climbed to 59 percent in 2002, and runaway health-care costs hit the economy, writes University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Endeavors magazine writer Neil Caudle, many researchers looked beyond the usual suspects of ''fast food and too much television'' and began to implicate ''the 'built environment,' much of which was built around cars'' and gradually morphed into the ever-farther suburbs. ''We grow up with the understanding that the only way to travel is by car, and the only way for communities to develop is with a separation of uses,'' but the time has come for governments and businesses to grasp the value of mixed uses and ''the economic advantage of having people out and about without cars,'' stresses UNC School of Public Health's Department of Health Behavior and Health Education Associate Professor Rich Killingsworth.