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januari 24, 2007
Stadsplanering och hälsa
[Till avdelningen att kolla in lite mer på. Speciellt nu när vardagsmotionsavståndet till arbetet är 7 minuters gångväg i stället för tidigare 10 + busstur + 20.]
Science News: Weighing In on City Planning:
[Lawrence] Frank is part of an emerging area of cross-disciplinary science that's examining the relationship between the shapes of our cities and the shapes of our bodies.He and other researchers have evidence that associates health problems with urban sprawl, a loose term for humanmade landscapes characterized by a low density of buildings, dependence on automobiles, and a separation of residential and commercial areas. Frank proposes that sprawl discourages physical activity, but some researchers suggest that people who don't care to exercise choose suburban life. Besides working to settle that disagreement, researchers are looking at facets of urban design that may shortchange health.
As scientists investigate the relationship between sprawl and obesity, a compact style of city development sometimes called smart growth might become a tool in the fight for the nation's health. However, University of Toronto economist Matthew Turner charges that "a lot of people out there don't like urban sprawl, and those people are trying to hijack the obesity epidemic to further the smart-growth agenda [and] change how cities look."
Vissa resultat verkar kanske vara självklara, men det som är självklart behöver inte vara sant, och en god forskare studerar "självklara" samband.
In 2004, Frank and his colleagues produced additional connections among urban form, activity, and obesity. The data on more than 10,500 people in the Atlanta area indicated that the more time a person spends in a car, the more obese he or she tends to be. But the more time people spend walking, the less obese they are....
But Brownson, Ewing, and others caution that these associations don't prove that sprawl causes laziness or weight gain. Most of the studies provide only a snapshot of different people at a single time. Such studies can't prove that living amid sprawl leads to inactivity; it may also be that inactive people choose to inhabit areas where driving is the easiest way to get around.
In other words, people with different health habits and different propensities to gain weight may sort themselves into different kinds of neighborhoods.
En alternativ teori till att boende i en tätort orsakar viktökningar är att personer med vissa hälso-vanor och tendens till viktökning "sorterar" sig till tätbebyggelser.
That's what Turner suggests is going on. Turner conducted a study that tracked people over time, as some of them moved from one neighborhood to another. He and his collaborators found no change in weight associated with moving from a sprawling locale to a dense one, or vice versa."We're the only ones that have tried to distinguish between causation and sorting ... and we find that it's sorting," he says. "The available facts do not support the conclusion that sprawling neighborhoods cause weight gain."
Vidare teorier och referenser finns i artikeln.
Se även
Seatte Times: 2 studies: Urban sprawl adds pounds, pollution
Intervju med Reid Ewing
Matthew Turner publikationer
Bok av Howard Frumkin, Lawrence Frank, and Richard Joseph Jackson: Urban Sprawl and Public Health -
Designing, Planning, and Building for Healthy Communities (ISBN: 1559633050).
Posted by hakank at januari 24, 2007 08:43 EM Posted to Komplexitet/emergens | Sport, idrott, hälsa