Comment by xboxnolifes
5 days ago
The amount of time in the exercise advice keep getting shorter and shorter. The common advice when I was younger, in the USA, was an hour of exercise. Couldn't get enough people to do it. Then it was 30 minutes. Still couldn't get people to do it. Now the advice has been 15 minutes a day for a while, and we'll still not be able to get people to do it.
The environment and culture needs to be structured such that people get the exercise they need "naturally". The vast majority aren't going to go out of their way for it.
That's a big part of why zoning is so dangerous. In most of the western world (Europe too on average), we pushed down population density so much that your typical destinations are much less likely to be within walking distance, so you don't walk.
Indeed. In NYC I do 98% of my shopping by walking. I can reach my doctor by walking. My daughter used to walk to school because it was a 10 minutes walk (and an excellent school).
That would be impossible in a suburban setting; at best, one of these destinations would be within the theoretical waking distance, but without the walkways.
> That would be impossible in a suburban setting;
Not necessarily true. The "village center" idea Jim Rouse used in his design of Columbia, MD could be used to solve the problem.
All of these things are within walking distance if you live in Columbia's village of Wilde Lake (and, of course, your health insurance covers the primary care physicians in walking distance).
I'm guessing you're thinking of typical "stroad" suburbs, but alternatives are possible and do exist.
Unfortunately, the suburb has to be the product of planning like Columbia. Typical "emergent" suburbs turn into unwalkable ones.
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Absolutely. There's a reason body fat percentage in New York City is so much lower than anywhere else in the US!
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Really depends on the suburb. Where I live in NYS (a suburb of Buffalo) all of those things are within walking distance if you live within the village limits.
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Yeah pretty much the only way to scale exercise to entire populations and over entire lifetimes is to design it directly into the cities.
The crazy part is you don't even have to DESIGN it, the market is desperate to build walkable density because it's so much more profitable than anything else. You just have to LET landowners build upward.
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