Could urban design make us healthier?
Image from Corbis.com © Ed Snowshoe/Corbis
When I moved to the US almost 2 years ago, I was surprised of all the costly implications of having health insurance in comparison to Mexico. Healthcare is one thing; health is another. Talking about health means addressing the way we live, work, consume; it’s always about prevention rather than treatment and If we really wanted to minimize the cost of healthcare, prevention is the answer.
The routine when our parents used to take the walk of getting to work is over. The number of jobs requiring even moderate physical activity is declining, and this may be a significant contributor to rising obesity and diabetes rates. And it’s an issue for productivity at least in the corporate world: A healthy worker is significantly more productive than an unhealthy one and that’s probably the reason some places even offer incentives to lose weight…better health and less money they would need to spend on your healthcare!
But the workplace is just one component, a big one, of the many spaces in which we spend our lives and that contribute to a healthy lifestyle. As the trend toward urban living increases, particularly for the knowledge workers populating those sedentary desk jobs, the way we design and inhabit our cities will matter more. I believe cities can make us healthier. But there’s a big gap between can and will, and closing that gap will be an ongoing battle for many years to come.
Urban living can help us get out of our cars onto a variety of transportation modes that are both healthier and more sustainable. Increasing the number of people walking and biking may have serious public health benefits, and the density and variety of the urban landscape only makes these easier to achieve.
But there’s also a lot of work to do. In the U.S., many of the communities built in the past 50 years have regressed, specially tiny little “1 road towns” similar to what we saw in the movie Cars by Pixar. Cities designed and built around the car have taken the bikes and pedestrians out of many of our communities, creating places that add to our problems rather than subtract. A culture built around freedom and independence has internalized these car-centric places where the typical idea of the American Dream as I understand it involves some sort of single-family, 2 car garage home with a blue picket fence and a politician sign against amendment 8 out front. And as other countries pursue economic growth, and the follow-on urbanization, many have emulated the failed approach for suburbs living and extending the problem globally.
It doesn’t help that the positive examples magazines and well know architects and even regular people (including myself) often point to come from a standard list of Global Cities; New York, Chicago, London, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, San Francisco… that are far removed from the cultural reality of many of the places where this problem is most pressing.
Maybe our obsession with the car will fade as generations change. Seizing on this opportunity will require making all our communities healthier, not just the standard famous cities. It will require new approaches to public transportation, new development strategies that promote in-fill over suburb sprawl and cultural changes that idolize different forms of living and transportation.
Personally, I’m optimistic. My hubby got me an awesome bike for xmas and I think the trend away from car ownership is here to stay and that creative design and development solutions can help recreate more of our cities into just these places. No wonder we are still trying to move to Uptown Charlotte...
