The Power of Sprawl
...is making Americans fat, prone to heart ailments, and depressed, according to a recently-released study. It generated some alarmist headlines ("Suburbs: Hazardous to your Health!") as well as derision and mockery from critics.
It seems to be almost impossible to separate the actual issue from the ideological warfare that surrounds it. The study itself was led by a researcher from the University of Maryland's National Center for Smart Growth, which, I'm guessing, is not a completely non-partisan group.
That doesn't invalidate the findings, but it makes me a bit skeptical. For smart-growthers, there's an obvious political advantage to finding "evidence" that suburbanization must be restrained...for our health, of course.
At the same time, the most vocal trashing of the study has come from development-friendly Republicans and diehard opponents of planning, and their arguments have not been exactly logical. Check out this tour-de-force from Heritage Foundation "media trainer" Rich Tucker, for example. Remember, the question before us is: does sprawl promote more sedentary lifestyles, which in turn could make us more vulnerable to obesity, heart disease and mood disorders? The answers, according to Tucker:
1. Cars these days are better, safer and fun to drive. So the next time you're backed up and stressed out, take a moment to appreciate how fine your automobile is.
2. The movie American Beauty is "depressing" and portrays a Marine as a bad guy, while creating sympathy for a pot dealer. And it got awarded five Oscars by a bunch of Hollywood snots. Therefore, claims that suburbanites need more exercise are groundless!
3. We choose to live in suburbs, so they must be healthy for us. (And what about those of us who choose to drink vodka?). They're enjoyable, affordable and secure. You'll have to pry my lawnmower from my cold, dead hands!
From where I'm sitting -- which happens to be in a subdivision of recent vintage, surrounded on all sides by rapid development -- I'm more interested in whether the researchers have a valid point. I can buy the idea of a link between topography and behavior, but I have questions about the extent of that link, and the scope of the claims being made.
People in the 'burbs are enthusiastic consumers of exercise products. It's possible that some suburbanites are more athletic than some city dwellers, especially since the middle-class tends to be self-obsessed, and by extension, obsessed with health and body image. Suburbanites are, it's true, famous for using their cars to navigate even short, walkable distances; we also like to fight each other for parking spaces located close to the store (meanwhile, plenty of open space near the end of the lot). But I'm not convinced this has a decisive impact on health, unless a parking lot squabble ends in physical violence. It would probably be more accurate to say that suburbanites schedule exercise, like we schedule everything else. Life in the 'burbs is certainly less spontaneous, but not necessarily less athletic.
Also, the problem has to be looked at holistically -- there's a range of factors affecting both health and behavior, and topography is only one of them. The unhealthy-suburb argument seems to rest on isolating a few specific aspects of suburban life, but it could be similarly argued that cities are inherently bad for you because more people smoke in bars there, or that rural life is unsafe because of farming accidents.
Speaking personally, I've lived in cities, towns and now in the suburbs. And I've managed to be equally lazy in all of them.
1:58:25 PM 
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