Fat city: Questioning the relationship between urban sprawl and obesity

Eid, J. François; Overman, Henry G.; Puga, Diego; Turner, Matthew A.

doi:10.1016/j.jue.2007.12.002

Cited by 190 publications

(205 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Already, it is noted that the failure to acknowledge unobserved preferences for health or location might lead to misguided interpretation in the association between sprawl and obesity. 24,25 In the commuting context, individuals caring less about their health might purposefully select long commutes to enjoy cheaper housing costs. It is difficult to disentangle such factors from long-run conditions such as commuting time and these results are only intended as an initial attempt to quantify trade-offs.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trade-Offs Between Commuting Time and Health-Related Activities

Christian

2012

J Urban Health

118

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To further understand documented associations between obesity and urban sprawl, this research describes individuals' trade-offs between health-related activities and commuting time. A cross-section of 24,861 working-age individuals employed full-time and residing in urban counties is constructed from the American Time Use Survey (2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010). Data are analyzed using seemingly unrelated regressions to quantify health-related activity decreases in response to additional time spent commuting. Outcomes are total daily minutes spent in physical activity at a moderate or greater intensity, preparing food, eating meals with family, and sleeping. Commuting time is measured as all travel time between home and work and vice versa. The mean commuting time is 62 min daily, the median is 55 min, and 10.1% of workers commute 120 min or more. Spending an additional 60 min daily commuting above average is associated with a 6% decrease in aggregate healthrelated activities and spending an additional 120 min is associated with a 12% decrease. The greatest percentage of commuting time comes from sleeping time reductions (28-35%). Additionally, larger proportions of commuting time are taken from physical activity and food preparation relative to the mean commuting length: of 60 min spent commuting, 16.1% is taken from physical activity and 4.1% is taken from food preparation; of 120 min commuting, 20.3% is taken from physical activity and 5.6% is taken from food preparation. The results indicate that longer commutes are associated with behavioral patterns which over time may contribute to obesity and other poor health outcomes. These findings will assist both urban planners and researchers wishing to understand time constraints' impacts on health.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trade-Offs Between Commuting Time and Health-Related Activities

Christian

2012

J Urban Health

118

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“…Hence, the direction of observed relationships remains open to alternative explanations. For example, some people may choose a highly car-dependent (and presumably more green) living environment because they are not inclined to be physically active anyway (32).…”

Section: Physical Activitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Nature and Health

Hartig

Mitchell

Vries

et al. 2014

Annu. Rev. Public Health

2,601

1,803

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Urbanization, resource exploitation, and lifestyle changes have diminished possibilities for human contact with nature in many societies. Concern about the loss has helped motivate research on the health benefits of contact with nature. Reviewing that research here, we focus on nature as represented by aspects of the physical environment relevant to planning, design, and policy measures that serve broad segments of urbanized societies. We discuss difficulties in defining "nature" and reasons for the current expansion of the research field, and we assess available reviews. We then consider research on pathways between nature and health involving air quality, physical activity, social cohesion, and stress reduction. Finally, we discuss methodological issues and priorities for future research. The extant research does describe an array of benefits of contact with nature, and evidence regarding some benefits is strong; however, some findings indicate caution is needed in applying beliefs about those benefits, and substantial gaps in knowledge remain.

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“…While some researchers have found a definite link between urban form and travel behavior (Ewing et al 2003;Dieleman et al 2002;Handy et al 2005;Bhat and Guo 2007), there are others who did not find any significant relationship (Crane and Crepeau 1998;Eid et al 2008). However, the familiar adage 'correlation is not causality' applies here and while most of the studies to date have focused on correlation, causality is yet to be established.…”

Section: Impacts Of Sprawl On Urban Transportationmentioning

confidence: 98%

Evaluating the dynamic impacts of urban form on transportation and environmental outcomes in US cities

Kashem

Irawan

Wilson

2014

Int. J. Environ. Sci. Technol.

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Previous urban sprawl studies have typically taken a cross-sectional approach without examining how sprawling urban areas are performing over time. Longitudinal studies of individual or household travel behavior and built-environment preference have made some progress in this direction, but very few studies have explored the longitudinal interaction of urban form with transportation and environmental outcomes. This study begins to fill this gap by evaluating the transportation and environmental impact dynamics of several key dimensions of urban sprawl: density, land use mix, centrality, and street connectivity. The central hypothesis is that while the built environment is durable and development patterns change slowly, the impacts of urban sprawl are dynamic rather than static and are accelerated in more sprawling cities relative to less sprawling cities. To test this hypothesis, a panel dataset of 7 years (2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007) was developed for 60 Metropolitan Statistical Areas of the US and a hybrid modeling framework that incorporates fixed and random effects is applied to evaluate different transportation and environmental outcomes over time. We found that the influence of urban centrality or the strength of urban subcenters on the travel pattern of commuters and transit users is dynamic. This suggests that people living in cities with stronger centers drive less and use public transportation more over time. For environmental outcomes, we found that cities with higher density have experienced a significant decrease in ambient ozone and PM 2.5 concentrations after controlling city-specific variables.

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Fat city: Questioning the relationship between urban sprawl and obesity

Cited by 190 publications

References 27 publications

Trade-Offs Between Commuting Time and Health-Related Activities

Trade-Offs Between Commuting Time and Health-Related Activities

Nature and Health

Evaluating the dynamic impacts of urban form on transportation and environmental outcomes in US cities

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