7 ms·

Countrywide natural experiment links built environment to physical activity

59 points by Anon84 1y ago

cadamsdotcom 1y ago
All I could glean from the abstract is that people walk more in walkable cities.
1970-01-01 1y ago
This is broken at the top and bottom. Your elected representatives don't know that a bicycle network even exists. Safer roads for cars are their only transportation priority. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bicycle_Route_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bicycle_Route_Sy...
- amluto 1y ago
  Wow. It’s fun to compare the US bicycle routes to the bicycle routes in the Netherlands. Here’s the first Wikipedia photo of USBR 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Bicycle_Route_1#/media/File%3A2017-06-26_14_22_35_View_south_along_Virginia_State_Route_4_(Buggs_Island_Road)_at_U.S._Route_58_in_Mecklenburg_County%2C_Virginia.jpg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Bicycle_Route_1#/media/... Look, it’s a road on which is possible, but not necessarily desirable, to ride a bike. The Netherlands has at least two systems: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LF-routes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LF-routes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbered-node_cycle_network https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbered-node_cycle_network and neither article emphasizes the dramatic difference between these and the US system, possibly because it’s utterly obvious to anyone who has ever used the Dutch system: the Dutch bike routes are far, far higher quality. You can bike from almost anywhere to almost anywhere with the bulk of the route (at least outside of a city center) on paths are well separated from cars or even nowhere near a road at all. A lot of them even separate pedestrians from bikes or separate fast bikes from slow bikes. Even the worse bike paths are better than most bike paths in the US. If you ride the bike paths to a major store or a mall, you will generally find that the dedicated bike parking is closer than the car parking. If you go to a smaller store, a cafe or a house, you will be able to get from the nearest bike path to the building without crossing a traffic lane. If you go to a busy area, you might find a double decker bike parking lot! This works well in a country with more bikes than people. Those paths are heavily utilized. The US has excellent bike paths as well, but they are largely the exception, not the norm, and the almost entirely fail to connect into a cohesive system on which you can safely bike from point A to point B without ending up on nasty roads for large fractions of the trip.
dynm 1y ago
I'm confused. Usually a "natural experiment" is a chance event that affects some random subset of a population. Here, they seem to be using "natural experiment" to refer to the event that someone decides to move to a different city. But obviously the subset of people in Amarilllo, TX who decide to move to New York, NY are going to be somewhat different than the subset who don't. So isn't this confounded? It's really strange that they just jump into the paper and keep saying "natural experiment" over and over again without any justification that they actually have one. They do eventually get to this in the "Selection effects in relocation and mobile app usage" section, but I think they really downplay the seriousness of the issue.
- jt2190 1y ago
  I think they were claiming that people who move to certain cities increase their activity after moving, regardless of where they come from.
trainsarebetter 1y ago
It’s funny how as we increase a nations gdp, and general wealth, we commodify everything. day care, dog walkers, psychical activity, etc and then we have to go back and do all this market research and artificially recreate what was holistic about the more rural way of life. There really is no free lunch!
- potato3732842 1y ago
  It's not like those things weren't all getting done before. They just didn't generate commerce and didn't generate GDP. GDP goes up because of commodifying all those things. It's not clear if it's actually more efficient this way though.
  - trainsarebetter 1y ago
    That’s my point really, we just commercialized everything, and introduced a bunch of extra steps. Could argue it enabled us to scale and handle very large amounts of people residing together.
- uoaei 1y ago
  GDP doesn't represent much about output so much as how much money people pay for what outputs. It follows directly from this that if you want to increase GDP, you start commodifying activities that previously were not measured in economic terms, e.g. childcare, art, etc.
- footy 1y ago
  I live in the most urban environment that exists in my country and get significantly more physical activity than the car-dependent rural dwellers in my family. As it is, I am almost 40 and have never owned a car, cities are great.
  - bracketfocus 1y ago
    That probably means you are an outlier. One thing I see, is that people in urban environments typically opt-in to exercise (like voluntarily going on a run). Whereas those in more rural areas have more physical demanding jobs and responsibilities. I’m an urban-based desk jockey who exercises a lot but it doesn’t really compare to my more rurally-based friends who are on their feet working blue collar jobs 5 days a week.
allcentury 1y ago
I’d like to see a study like this for young kids. Anecdotally, I ran through the woods until I went to college and stress about the urban life I’m providing for my kids
- amanaplanacanal 1y ago
  It might depend on what you mean by urban. Are there a lot of places your kids can walk to from your residence? I'm thinking of schools, parks, stores, etc. or are you in a place where they really have to be driven everywhere?
  - jewayne 1y ago
    True. Older (in the U.S., pre-war) neighborhoods actually provide kids with far more opportunities for walking than newer, cul-de-sac based suburban neighborhoods. I keep wondering when we're going to stop allowing such immobilizing, isolating neighborhoods to be built.
    - amanaplanacanal 1y ago
      The first time I looked at a city map of my home town and saw the division between the prewar streetcar suburbs, and the postwar neighborhoods, was a revelation. Before the war: everything is on a grid, and there are alleys for utilities and garages down every block. Easy to walk everywhere. After: no more alleys, cul-de-sacs everywhere, traffic funneled onto arterials, unwalkable.
    - wffurr 1y ago
      Or at least start allowing pre war style neighborhoods to even be built again. I don’t think it’s so much a matter of banning “bad” development as allowing all kinds.
    - stetrain 1y ago
      I'd love to see cities put efforts into connecting those isolated cultures-de-sac neighborhoods with pedestrian and bike paths. I can understand the desire to reduce through-traffic which sometimes comes with speeding or aggressive drivers. But walking and cycling to your friends house shouldn't mean going a mile out to the entrance of your neighborhood, down the busy highway, then a mile back in to their house when they were only half a mile away to begin with.

59 points by Anon84 1y ago

All I could glean from the abstract is that people walk more in walkable cities.

1970-01-01 1y ago

This is broken at the top and bottom. Your elected representatives don't know that a bicycle network even exists. Safer roads for cars are their only transportation priority. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bicycle_Route_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bicycle_Route_Sy...

amluto 1y ago
Wow. It’s fun to compare the US bicycle routes to the bicycle routes in the Netherlands. Here’s the first Wikipedia photo of USBR 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Bicycle_Route_1#/media/File%3A2017-06-26_14_22_35_View_south_along_Virginia_State_Route_4_(Buggs_Island_Road)_at_U.S._Route_58_in_Mecklenburg_County%2C_Virginia.jpg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Bicycle_Route_1#/media/... Look, it’s a road on which is possible, but not necessarily desirable, to ride a bike. The Netherlands has at least two systems: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LF-routes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LF-routes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbered-node_cycle_network https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbered-node_cycle_network and neither article emphasizes the dramatic difference between these and the US system, possibly because it’s utterly obvious to anyone who has ever used the Dutch system: the Dutch bike routes are far, far higher quality. You can bike from almost anywhere to almost anywhere with the bulk of the route (at least outside of a city center) on paths are well separated from cars or even nowhere near a road at all. A lot of them even separate pedestrians from bikes or separate fast bikes from slow bikes. Even the worse bike paths are better than most bike paths in the US. If you ride the bike paths to a major store or a mall, you will generally find that the dedicated bike parking is closer than the car parking. If you go to a smaller store, a cafe or a house, you will be able to get from the nearest bike path to the building without crossing a traffic lane. If you go to a busy area, you might find a double decker bike parking lot! This works well in a country with more bikes than people. Those paths are heavily utilized. The US has excellent bike paths as well, but they are largely the exception, not the norm, and the almost entirely fail to connect into a cohesive system on which you can safely bike from point A to point B without ending up on nasty roads for large fractions of the trip.

dynm 1y ago

I'm confused. Usually a "natural experiment" is a chance event that affects some random subset of a population. Here, they seem to be using "natural experiment" to refer to the event that someone decides to move to a different city. But obviously the subset of people in Amarilllo, TX who decide to move to New York, NY are going to be somewhat different than the subset who don't. So isn't this confounded? It's really strange that they just jump into the paper and keep saying "natural experiment" over and over again without any justification that they actually have one. They do eventually get to this in the "Selection effects in relocation and mobile app usage" section, but I think they really downplay the seriousness of the issue.

jt2190 1y ago
I think they were claiming that people who move to certain cities increase their activity after moving, regardless of where they come from.

trainsarebetter 1y ago

It’s funny how as we increase a nations gdp, and general wealth, we commodify everything. day care, dog walkers, psychical activity, etc and then we have to go back and do all this market research and artificially recreate what was holistic about the more rural way of life. There really is no free lunch!

potato3732842 1y ago
It's not like those things weren't all getting done before. They just didn't generate commerce and didn't generate GDP. GDP goes up because of commodifying all those things. It's not clear if it's actually more efficient this way though.
- trainsarebetter 1y ago
  That’s my point really, we just commercialized everything, and introduced a bunch of extra steps. Could argue it enabled us to scale and handle very large amounts of people residing together.
uoaei 1y ago
GDP doesn't represent much about output so much as how much money people pay for what outputs. It follows directly from this that if you want to increase GDP, you start commodifying activities that previously were not measured in economic terms, e.g. childcare, art, etc.
footy 1y ago
I live in the most urban environment that exists in my country and get significantly more physical activity than the car-dependent rural dwellers in my family. As it is, I am almost 40 and have never owned a car, cities are great.
- bracketfocus 1y ago
  That probably means you are an outlier. One thing I see, is that people in urban environments typically opt-in to exercise (like voluntarily going on a run). Whereas those in more rural areas have more physical demanding jobs and responsibilities. I’m an urban-based desk jockey who exercises a lot but it doesn’t really compare to my more rurally-based friends who are on their feet working blue collar jobs 5 days a week.

allcentury 1y ago

I’d like to see a study like this for young kids. Anecdotally, I ran through the woods until I went to college and stress about the urban life I’m providing for my kids

amanaplanacanal 1y ago
It might depend on what you mean by urban. Are there a lot of places your kids can walk to from your residence? I'm thinking of schools, parks, stores, etc. or are you in a place where they really have to be driven everywhere?
- jewayne 1y ago
  True. Older (in the U.S., pre-war) neighborhoods actually provide kids with far more opportunities for walking than newer, cul-de-sac based suburban neighborhoods. I keep wondering when we're going to stop allowing such immobilizing, isolating neighborhoods to be built.
  - amanaplanacanal 1y ago
    The first time I looked at a city map of my home town and saw the division between the prewar streetcar suburbs, and the postwar neighborhoods, was a revelation. Before the war: everything is on a grid, and there are alleys for utilities and garages down every block. Easy to walk everywhere. After: no more alleys, cul-de-sacs everywhere, traffic funneled onto arterials, unwalkable.
  - wffurr 1y ago
    Or at least start allowing pre war style neighborhoods to even be built again. I don’t think it’s so much a matter of banning “bad” development as allowing all kinds.
  - stetrain 1y ago
    I'd love to see cities put efforts into connecting those isolated cultures-de-sac neighborhoods with pedestrian and bike paths. I can understand the desire to reduce through-traffic which sometimes comes with speeding or aggressive drivers. But walking and cycling to your friends house shouldn't mean going a mile out to the entrance of your neighborhood, down the busy highway, then a mile back in to their house when they were only half a mile away to begin with.