Why walk when you can drive? The number of miles an American drives has doubled since 1963.
Ellen Goodman, a syndicated columnist based at the Boston Globe, writes about the impact of automobile-centricity. "Remember when everybody wanted to live in Fat City -- the imaginary capital of the land of plenty? Well, nobody seems to regard it as a compliment anymore. In case you missed it, Detroit was given the dubious honor this year of being named the fattest city in America... It portrayed the winner as a beer-bellied blue-shirted slob eating a bucket of doughnuts and against a backdrop of -- ta da -- hub caps... Motown as Fat City? This just may be the moment when we acknowledge that the culprit in the battle of the bulge has more than a giant maw. It has four wheels."
Thanks to Richard Layman
FULL STORY: Driving to Fat City

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