How your suburb can make you thinner by making itself more walkable - and what steps are needed to make that reality | Politico

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To appreciate the classic American town, go to Europe. The narrow streets of most European cities and towns meander past a parade of tightly packed homes, cafes, shops, markets and parks, all teeming with people on foot. Today, we think of this buzzing pedestrian existence as the kind of quaint thing you plan a vacation to experience. It used to be daily life for Americans too, says James Sallis, a public-health and behavioral medicine researcher at the University of California, San Diego—right up until the early middle of the 20th century, when we started rebuilding the American community around the automobile. "People liked riding in cars, and so we got the suburbs," he says. "Now everybody has privacy, quiet and space."

What they also got, Sallis adds, was fat and unhealthy. Suburban Americans came to build their lives around sitting—sitting on the sofa, sitting at an office desk and, most of all, sitting in the car. The car became essential, increasingly so as work shifted from the local factory to offices in the city; as the local butcher, baker and grocer were replaced by more distant supermarkets; as malls three towns over pulled business from local shops. Kids went from meeting up with friends at nearby playgrounds or soda shops to being shepherded in a car from school to math tutoring to tae kwon do to soccer practice. Lost along the way were the daily walking and biking that used to get people from place to place in their self-contained communities. . . .

[R]oughly speaking, there are two types of walkers: Those who walk because it's an easy, fast way to get where they're going, whether it's work, a store or a cafe; and those who walk because they're interested in the natural scenery along their paths, such as parks, rivers and woods. In other words, walkers tend to be in it either for the journey or for the destination, but generally not both. "It's the difference between enjoying what you're seeing along the way, compared to just wanting the shortest route to the bus stop," says Saelens.

That's a critical insight, because it suggests that communities that want to make big strides in boosting walking and biking need to cater both to the destination-focused "utilitarian" walkers, as Saelens calls them, and the scenery-focused "recreational" walkers. The former calls for direct, safe routes; the latter for lovely, meandering trails and paths. Increasing the ranks of the "recreationals" isn't rocket science; it just takes the community will and resources to improve parks and add in networks of walking and bike trails. If a river, pond or other body of water can be worked into the trail network, so much the better.

The "utilitarians," on the other hand, are a tougher crowd. To be motivated to walk, they need to have places to get to that are within walking or biking distance, and with efficient and safe routes to connect them.

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