How The Suburbs Have Made Us Fat

I am reading an interesting book this week called "The Option of Urbanism" by Christopher B. Leinbeger that is a fascinating perspective on how we got to our current structure of housing in the country, what the positives and negatives are and what's next. I suspect that I will be making it a regular feature of my blogs in the coming days since there is so much to talk about and comment on.

One section of the book focuses on the benefits and drawbacks of the suburban environment that has become a mainstay in our culture. He pulled from a 2006 study from the Rand Corporation that found that when comparing the health of people in more and less sprawling locations that the spread-out places has about 100 more health problems per 1,000 people than areas that were less sprawling.

An amazing statistic but not surprising since our suburbs are so car-dependent. When the only option is to get in the car to go to work, run errands and get the kids to their activities we loose the opportunity to make valuable exercise part of our daily routine. In the same paragraph he quotes research from Dr. Lawrence Frank that found for every additional half hour per week residents in Atlanta spent in the car they were 3% more likely to be obese. I love the thought of giving back the 45 minutes a day I spend at the gym for the opportunity to walk down the street to pick up a gallon of milk or ride my bike to work.

As a real estate professional it is impossible to miss the point that home choices effect every part of our lives from economic to physical and that future development of walkable communities may be one of the solutions to our country's health crisis. What do you think?

Buying or Selling a home in the Pittsburgh area? Call Christa Ross from RE/MAX Select Realty, at 724-933-6300 x214 (office) or 724-779-1437 (direct) or visit my website at www.bestpittsburghhomes.com.

Photo: Copyright 2008 flickr user Living Streets Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 license