Is Urban Sprawl Making You Fat?

Urban sprawl produces so-called neighborhoods where there are rare parks and rarer sidewalks. Kids can't walk or bike to school because it's too far away. There aren't places for them to ride their bicycles or play tag at home.

You've landscaped and privacy-fenced your yard so that it's an outdoor oasis. All of the home decorating magazines tell you to make it another room for your house. It's beautiful and lush. But the kids can't play there, either, and the riding mower isn't giving them much exercise.

Is it any wonder that today's kids are fat and addicted to TV and their PlayStation? They've been sprawled so far away from places to play and from each other that the only exercise they get is organized sports that they are driven to and from. There isn't anywhere else for them to just run around and be children.

Living in the suburbs means not living along well-planned transit routes or within walking distance of local services. Your street is likely a dead end or a circle. It leads only to more residential development where there may well be no sidewalks. You will almost certainly be without convenient stores and restaurants.

Urban sprawl creates a lifestyle that forces you to drive to every destination. Instead of stopping by the local market on the way home from work, you drive three miles to Target, another to the grocery store, and four more to get home. The Home Depot is 20 minutes away, but there isn't a neighborhood hardware store where you can pick up a box of nails so you have to drive there.

Walking is relegated to an exercise program that the demand for spacious, private, single-family lots makes difficult. You are forced to wander around cookie-cutter developments with few sidewalks. You could join a fitness club, that you drive through six miles of spread to reach for a half an hour on the Stairmaster. Even better, you could spend six months' membership dues and buy a machine for your home. Sure, you can't walk around the block, but it's not like your neighbors are outside anyway.

Now that you've bought your dream home and are already driving to Starbucks for a latte instead of stopping in at the corner diner for a cup of joe, what do you do? Sell the half-acre and move to a condo downtown? Not necessarily, but there are couple of things that you can do.

1.Get to know your neighbors and their kids. This is the best way to build a community where you feel safe with your children playing in the front yard or down the block. It's also a good way to get out and move around instead of running in place in the basement.

2. Help your local park board to fight hard for bike paths and pocket parks. Get some community space into your neighborhood every few blocks. It will provide your children with a destination and a safer spot to run and jump without watching for cars every three seconds.

People who live in suburban neighborhoods are heavier and less fit than their urban counterparts. According to the Centers for Disease Control, it might be the suburban lifestyle created by urban sprawl that makes people fat. On the other side of the coin, the University of Toronto thinks it's that people prone to a sedentary lifestyle choose sprawling suburban homes.

Whatever the reason, a life in suburbia doesn't mean that you have to turn into a blob. Making an effort to get your family out into to open can make a difference and remind your neighbors that they, too, should play outside once in a while.

For more information, please see How Parking Lots Contribute to Urban Sprawl and Fighting Urban Sprawl: Mixed-Use Development.