Suburbia Isn't To Blame For Obesity

3 April 2008 - 1:00pm

New research suggests that urban sprawl doesn't cause weight gain in residents, though it does attract people who are inclined to be heavy and prefer to move around by car.

"Using urban planning to fight the obesity epidemic will probably not work because people's weight does not change when they move to the suburbs, researchers said on Wednesday.

Earlier studies had suggested a link between rising rates of obesity and sprawling neighborhoods. Some researchers have proposed using city planning as a way to combat the battle of the bulge.

But an international team of researchers said they found no evidence that neighborhood characteristics have a causal effect on weight.

"There's a lot of talk about redesigning cities and the expectation that they will affect people's health and weight in particular, but what these results tell us is that those expectations are probably incorrect," said Professor Matthew Turner of the University of Toronto and a co-author of the study.

Using data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Turner and scientists in Britain and Spain tracked nearly 6,000 people in their late 20s and early 30s living in neighborhoods throughout the United States.

In research published in the Journal of Urban Economics they said they found that people's weight did not change as they moved from one neighborhood to another. Rather, people who are inclined to be heavy are choosing to live in particular types of neighborhoods because they can more easily move around by car for example."

Full Story: Sprawling neighborhoods not linked to obesity, study finds

Source: Reuters, April 2, 2008

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Flawed

Submitted by joshloki on Thu, 04/03/2008 - 13:08.

The assumptions that the argument is based on is fundamentally flawed ... did anyone else notice that?

“Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure”

- Thorstein Veblen

What assumptions is the article based on?

Submitted by freeyoke on Fri, 04/04/2008 - 06:49.

I would try to figure what you're referring to but I'll leave that to you.

I remember reading that when some tried to connect childhood obesity to the lack of walkable neighborhoods it was debunked. Kids weren't more active in walkable environments due to video games, dvds, computers and paranoia from "missing kids on milk cartons" and child molestors behind every bush. That explains the push for activities for kids in controlled, monitored environments.

Also your quote isn't relevant here. If conspicious consumption of food and say use of cars lead to obesity then the wealthly now should as corpulent as the rich guys at the turn of century who looked like President Taft. In reality, the tables have turned for the first time in human history where the rich exercise and diet to show they are well off and the poor are overweight.

Also remember that the move to surburbia took place after WWII yet widespread obesity has only emerged as a health concern in what, the last 10 years? Even in Africa, of all places, obesity is starting to become a problem it has little to do with car ownership or surburbia.

Exercise is important but good nutrition is as well. Americans want to blame someone or something else for their growing waistlines and blow millions on diet pills as a substitute to diet and exercise.

'Fat City' and good ideas.

Submitted by Dano on Fri, 04/04/2008 - 10:19.

I respect Puga and Turner's work, and the paper looks at self-selection for a snapshot in time and finds certain correlates*. That is: self-selection in these neighborhoods occured during the time they looked, therefore no correlation was found.

That is true, as this finding squares with others, such as Plantinga and Bernell. Today, fit people self-select into places that enable their behaviors, as do people who don't want to walk. What cannot be concluded or predicted from this paper is how much behavioral change will occur in the future such that the disamenity of auto-dependent neighborhoods will cause Tiebout sorting to walkable neighborhoods. IOW: will factors such as health care costs, gas prices and societal norms cause conditions where unfit people want to walk more?

This is still being debated, as is whether folk will sort to walkable neighborhoods when gas prices go beyond $x/gal. These reasons are why walkable neighborhoods are sought - simply, it is a better idea to create enabling neighborhoods than disabling neighborhoods in the first place, as retrofitting is more expensive.

Come now: who would argue that it is better for, say, an automaker to make its models with no headroom for people over 6'1"? No one. Of course it is better for an automaker to make its cars more comfortable to operate for everyone. Same with the built environment. It is just good sense.

Now, whether the environmental health/public health/epidemiology folks want to tease out self-selection for a factor to predict x% of folks will do y remains to be seen. Do we really need to predict to a fraction of a % whether good ideas catch on sooner rather than later, or is this just another delaying tactic for some?

Best,

we still see a negative correlation between mixed use and obesity, even after controlling for these observable individual characteristics

into these neighborhoods