Sprawl May Harm Health

Sprawl May Harm Health, Study Finds (washingtonpost.com) By Rob Stein

People who live in sprawling communities tend to suffer more health problems, according to the first study to document a link between the world of strip malls, cul-de-sacs and subdivisions and a broad array of ailments.

The study, which analyzed data on more than 8,600 Americans in 38 metropolitan areas -- including the Washington region -- found that rates of arthritis, asthma, headaches and other complaints increased with the degree of sprawl. Living in areas with the least amount of sprawl, compared with living in areas with the most, was like adding about four years to people's lives in terms of their health, the study found...

But critics dismissed the findings, saying the study was flawed and the link between sprawl and health was tenuous at best.

"I remain a skeptic of the research, in part because the results they find are weak," said Samuel R. Staley, a senior fellow at the Reason Foundation, a Los Angeles-based libertarian group. "This study seems particularly prone to spurious results -- results that are statistically related but really don't tell us much about causes."

Peter Gordon, a professor in the school of policy, planning and development at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles agreed, calling the study "junk science." The areas studied, for example, are so large they could not distinguish important neighborhood differences, he said.

"Describing places this large via a simple ad hoc 'sprawl' index is nuts," Gordon wrote in an e-mail. "People have been suburbanizing for a very long time. Yet, life expectancy keeps getting longer."

This is old news, but I was thinking about as I walked home yesterday. We live in a small university town, and although many (most?) of us live within walking distance of campus, I don't see many others taking advantage of the opportunity to walk to school. On the other hand, I have visited friends living in big-city suburbs who live in residential neighborhoods that are small conclaves with or without sidewalks, where the only walk one could take would be slightly bigger than a tiger pacing in its cage.