urban sprawl feeds obesity

[mimitabby]

someone cycling every day to save gas money more than makes up for the "cost" of that international flight.

what gets me are:
people leaving the faucet running.
people leaving their cars running.
cities planned so poorly that it's HARD to get to a supermarket
without a car.
people LIVING in their cars because they have too many activities.
people flocking to desert climates where you can't live unless you have a/c all year round!
off my soap box.
I loved the idea of a solar heated bathtub!
If we all do A LITTLE it will make up for the bad things that we do. it's a start.

today i will do my part. Taking an electric bus downtown so i can
go to Fremont on my bike.

[teigyr]

Everyone here has great observations about what's going on. I often laugh when I look at the parking lot at work, there are so many huge trucks and SUVs that can't even fit in a parking spot! All of these vehicles are driven by ONE driver. I work/park in a restricted area so it is rare to have more than one person in a vehicle. A lot of our workgroup, also, live in places up to 100 miles away.

While I drive to work (due to my hours and distance, I pretty much have to though I would LOVE to take the bus or light rail if it was possible), my car gets over 35 mpg. My car also has enough room for my bike. When we're at home, we walk everywhere. We are in the city but not downtown. If we go to the grocery store, the post office, or out to eat, we walk. People actually laugh at us because we're known as "the walkers". Our one hangout is about a mile away or so and people seem to think we're doing something incredibly difficult by walking. If we go downtown, we take the bus then walk around. Is easier that way.

I am always amused by the people that travel to Europe and marvel about how they "ate everything they wanted and still lost weight!". Um...duh. Walking, biking (is common in Denmark) and racing to the underground are perfect little ways to get exercise in.

[teigyr]

people LIVING in their cars because they have too many activities.

Hey now, you've peeked in my car!!! Though maybe it's laziness instead of too many activities.

[northstar]

I believe the Minneapolis/St. Paul was rated one of the worst cities in the country for urban sprawl. Ay, yi yi. I've been involved in some local development issues, and when we raise concerns about developments making the area less safe for pedestrians or cyclists, we are called communists, anti-diversity...you name it. We're trying to encourage development that allows people choice when it comes to their transportation, and we get screeched at by the auto-reliant because they don't want to subsidize other people's transportation. Not to mention we've been subsidizing the auto industry/way of life for YEARS AND YEARS...

[mimitabby]

fyi
i do some of this stuff too.
we all have to try to do better. I am trying!
Then i think. what about that woman in africa who can't get clean water for her little kids and has to wait in line to get a mosquito net to cover her babies with that she can't afford to get but maybe some of us rich westerners donated enough $$ to a charity who doles them out to her and maybe there are enough today?
and here i am running water down the drain, water that she could drink?

Sigh..

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

When DH and I met, we both had large houses with mortgages and several acres of land, 50 minute drive apart from each other.
We both sold our big houses, got ride of half of all our junk, and bought a LITTLE house outright, on a 1/3 acre, right in town here. We purposely looked for and bought a house where we would be able to WALK into town without using cars.
That's what we do- we usually WALK or BIKE the 1 mile round trip to Main St. and back- to the P.O, the bank, the drugstore, the cafe, the health food store, etc. Biking and walking. We only take the cars to do a big supermarket trip. We work at home (we are lucky that way, not all people can do that I realize).
We use a tiny fraction of the gas we used to use. Plus we are now in much better health.

[Python]

We have similar problems over here. I live 2 1/2 miles from the town centre. Easy commuting by bike and we have a good bus service - runs every 10 minutes. Unfortunately, at the moment our town centre is more or less decimated as they are building a new shopping centre. At this end of town we have a big retail park with ASDA-Walmart and several other big named stores. We do our main shopping there and if there is anything I need there are cycle paths (no cars allowed) from my house directly there. I just put whatever I buy in my back-pack. It takes 8 minutes to get to ASDA-Walmart by bike. It takes 12 minutes by car as the cycle paths are a more direct route.

We have a serious overcrowding problem here thanks to the government we have operating an "open door" immigration policy. There aren't enough houses to go round and immigrants are being given houses in preference to our own people - many who have been waiting for a house for several years. In the private sector, house prices are now so high that young people can't afford them. Most houses now cost well into 6 figure sums of money.

To compound problems, we don't have a decent public transport system and our roads are a mess, full of potholes. Public transport is also very expensive here. Go to countries like France, Holland, Germany etc. and their public transport is good and well thought out. What really irks me is that the government is banging on about getting cars off the road but to be honest, often it is cheaper to use your car than use public transport - which is also very unreliable here. They really need to sort out both town planning and public transport if they want to get people out of cars.

[pyxichick]

Geography of Nowhere

This is an excellent book about urban sprawl which touches on all of these issues.