Here's something else for arrogant New Yorkers to use to lord it over the suburb-dwellers: not only do they have better access to world-class cultural amenities and a sizzling nightlife, but they also get to live longer too.
Suburban sprawl, it appears, is bad for your health.I'm not in the least surprised by this. It didn't take much exposure to American suburbs for me to realize that the places often seemed positively hostile to the notion of walking from point to point. The "New Urbanism" movement has garnered much publicity and raised plenty of controversy for its support for policies to limit sprawl, but one thing that is rarely noted is that it is the very existence of poorly thought through policies that has done so much to foster the sprawl in the first place: in particular, the ubiquitous zoning restrictions on what can be built where. Although opposition to sprawl is often seen as a left-wing issue, there is nothing dirigiste about wishing to tear down regulations that encourage unhealthy, unwalkable and highly socially-stratified developments.A new study by the RAND Corp. think tank found that people in high-sprawl regions have more health problems such as diabetes, breathing difficulties, migraine headaches and high blood pressure.
The study found that living in a high-sprawl area has the equivalent effect on your health as aging four years. Researchers don't know why this is so, but they cited an earlier study that found people who live in high-sprawl areas walk less, weigh more and have a higher rate of high blood pressure.
Researchers also suggested that increased traffic in high-sprawl areas harms residents' health by causing more air pollution and traffic accidents.
"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 study co-author Deborah Cohen.
"there is nothing dirigiste about wishing to tear down regulations that encourage unhealthy, unwalkable and highly socially-stratified developments."
Amen. Especially since sprawl is economically inefficient on the publically funded infrastructure.
Posted by: Brian | September 29, 2004 at 12:29 AM