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A majority of infrastructure in the US makes it extremely hard to be healthy. Activity and healthy foods isn’t integrated into daily life. For example, you can’

• dorkwood 4y ago
  There's also seems to be a cultural stigma against walking, although I don't know how widespread it is. When I lived in California, people would actually laugh at me for walking places. "Only homeless people walk", I was told.
  • izzydata 4y ago
    Is it even possible to walk places in California? It seems like everything would take hours to get to or would take hiking over hills and highways.
    • CharlesW 4y ago
      > Is it even possible to walk places in California? California is vast, so there are many areas that are almost comically walk-proof, but there are also cities with a high average "walk score". https://www.walkscore.com/CA/ https://www.walkscore.com/CA/ I live in a SoCal coastal city of 60K which has a fairly low "walk score" of 43. The services I'd need on a regular basis are in the neighborhood of a 20-45m walk (one way).
    • SllX 4y ago
      Easily within most of San Francisco. It boils down to the neighborhood you live in, but a bus or streetcar can augment the trip. The downside of doing it that way is that then you also have to endure MUNI and depending on the time of the day it can feel taxing, so it’s better if you live in one of the neighborhoods that already has a good market street (e.g. Clement & Geary in the Inner Richmond).
    • thatfrenchguy 4y ago
      San Francisco beats a lot of European cities as far as walking is concerned, it’s so nice to walk around!
  • musha68k 4y ago
    There also is the the mental trap of what I call "car think" which happens to me whenever I have a car readily available. Distances that were no problem walking creepingly become unimaginable as the (contestable) comfort of a readily available car gets normalized. I can only imagine that this effect gets worse when it's your own car with "sunk cost" as part of the equation. I'm always happy when I get back to "city normal". Walking is awesome.
    • quickthrower2 4y ago
      The good thing about cities is they make parking so freaking annoying, expensive, hazardous (small parking spaces) and time consuming that walking becomes much more tolerable. Downside to walking is a weekly family shop isn't easy to carry around.
      • wbl 4y ago
        The benefit of nearby stores is you shop more often.
        • nradov 4y ago
          That's not a benefit, it's a huge hassle for anyone with a family and a busy schedule.
          • princeb 4y ago
            it's the other way around for me. out in the suburbs a grocery run was around an hour, driving to the mall, navigating the ridiculously large hypermarket, packing the boot, driving back. right now i live a block down from a grocery store and a grocery run is 15 minutes tops. because grocery shopping was such a hassle in the suburbs we did it once a week and tried to buy as much as possible to avoid going back. in the city i just grab whatever is on my list walking home from the train station.
            • nradov 4y ago
  • quickthrower2 4y ago
    Sounds like veiled classism rather than anti-walking. They would probably be against living in a RV and travelling the US.
  • nradov 4y ago
    My next-door neighbor here in California seemed kind of shocked when I told her I walked to the movie theater. It's 2 miles away, with a safe sidewalk.
  • ampham 4y ago
    When I lived in a more car-centric city in the US, I used to get honked at while walking. It was a thing in this city to honk and/or yell at pedestrians. I’m not sure what the thinking behind that sort of behavior is.
    • mym1990 4y ago
      Not sure there is any actual thinking going on there, sounds like pure stupidity to me.
  • windex 4y ago
    Ive had people throw cans and shout at me while walking. Never understood why. Your comment brings it together for me after so many years. I wasn't homeless, just didn't have a car at the time and was used to walking long distances where I came from.
• loeg 4y ago
  Has this gotten worse in the last 20 years, though? I think it was similarly bad around 2000, and yet, Americans have gotten less healthy over that period.
  • Retric 4y ago
    Large scale changes rarely have a single cause, and there is a real lag before different habits turn into health issues. Median age increased from 35.3 in 2000 to 38.6 today. I suspect an increase in using computers both at work and home has played a role. Urbanization has increased from 79% in 2000 to 83%, among everything else I think fewer people are doing yard work.
  • parineum 4y ago
    It hasn't. > A majority of infrastructure in the US makes it extremely hard to be healthy This is a copout.The only hard thing about being healthy is having the discipline to do so. Certainly more than 6.8% of people have the means to have healthy diet and they choose not to. There are definitely extreme cases of poverty where it would be difficult (which people who are well above that will use as an example to make themselves feel better about their choices) but I'd argue it's still very reasonable to be able to lead a very healthy lifestyle. We're fat as hell because we live a life of extreme abundance.
    • thatfrenchguy 4y ago
      And yet you see no obese person around in San Francisco. It’s better to expect people to not be disciplined and have a nice environment where they can have a healthy lifestyle by accident.
    • ampham 4y ago
      It’s not a cop out, it’s part of the variety of problems. Environment design can encourage certain habits and lifestyles. I agree that living an extreme life of abundance is also part of the problem. Though it’s definitely not the only cause.
  • refurb 4y ago
• foolfoolz 4y ago
  this is a lame excuse. many americans have time to exercise and spend it doing other things
  • sbf501 4y ago
    if you have money, it's a lame excuse. food deserts are real. not having enough free time to exercise is real.
    • ravel-bar-foo 4y ago
      If one has the time to spend on HN, they could spend it exercising. They won't, but they could.
  • galangalalgol 4y ago
    Yes and no, people get stuck in economic traps of paying for things they didn't really need, and those can eliminate all free time. Also, there really is a large group of americans that still work multiple jobs and can't afford healthcare, thats a thing. Some of those are physical jobs, but many are not.
  • closeparen 4y ago
    Maybe, but many people in the world are able to stay healthy without having to make the time commitment or discipline of regular explicit exercise. It just falls out of living their regular lifestyles.
• ulfw 4y ago
  It's also that in many places things have been built to enormous widths (with huge parking lots) but low heights. I hated living in Mountain View as walks were cumbersome. On the other hand I loved moving down to Santa Monica later where things tended to be much closer together, making walkability a real thing (which was in fact easier/more convenient than driving, at least in the downtown cores).
  • ampham 4y ago
    Exactly. Environment design can alter behaviors. If there’s a grocery store near me but no sidewalks, I have to cross a huge intersection, and there’s sketchy spaces — that’s not a good pedestrian experience at all.
• BLKNSLVR 4y ago
  This may be coming from a privileged position, but I don't get the "bad neighbourhood" thing (I can also run quite fast and am generally fit and healthy, so that's also a factor). I'm also based in Australia, so our idea of "bad neighbourhood" might not even be a blip on the US scale of "bad neighbourhood". I was working in Melbourne, staying near St. Kilda, and was told by some colleagues "don't go down street X at night", so I went down street X at night, had a nice meal there, walked back, no fucking worries at all. Next morning I heard on the news that someone had been stabbed to death on that street within half an hour of my being out and about there. The thing is, though, if you're not out causing trouble or selling drugs or buying drugs, or a member of the various competing underworlds, then you're likely to be totally fine. The stabbing was drug related. It's a bad neighborhood if you're part of what makes it a bad neighborhood - in this case, at least.
  • Sebguer 4y ago
    Yeah, most people who say parts of a city are "too dangerous to walk around" are overblown, especially in major cities. There are a few cities with a few areas where you probably don't want to be walking around if you don't know the area and the people. But, 90% of the time it's just that it's an immigrant area and people are afraid of difference.
    • User23 4y ago
      I got pulled over in St Louis once just so the cop could advise me to get out of the neighborhood I was in.
    • freilanzer 4y ago
  • skellera 4y ago
    Feeling safe is just as important as actually being safe. I think you partially addressed that already with the privilege part. I know my city has rough areas that definitely have an increased risk of getting mugged, robbed or just jumped for no reason. Knowing that is enough to keep me from going around there unless I have a reason.
• mrtweetyhack 4y ago
• sebazzz 4y ago
  And if you think from an environmental and practical perspective: Car-centric infrastructure cause more cars and more traffic jams, with more and more pollution. There needs to be good frequent public transport on dedicated rails or priority lanes, so it is faster than a car can be. Good bicycle infrastructure so people want to take the bike. It's crazy that many people see cycling as some kind of sport or free time activity, while it is for so many people a serious way to commute to work or get the groceries or visit family. But it is so cultural, so embedded in society, it is probably never going to be fixed. Also probably thanks to the motorvehicle lobby.