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The "She Build" initiative is empowering women in Seattle, WA by ensuring they have safe, healthy homes.
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"I have learned so much thanks to the searchable articles on the FHB website. I can confidently say that I expect to be a life-long subscriber." - M.K.
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Personally I think if people weren't b!tching about "sprawl" then the same people would be complaining about over population in urban areas and saying the pop. density is too high
Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, amateurs built the ark, Professionals build the Titanic.
Guess where Jabba the Hutt's race came from?
ok you got me, where?Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, amateurs built the ark, Professionals build the Titanic.
Good ole (and fat) Earth. Its a sign of where we are heading. Not sure if this is a good or bad thing. I like the idea that humans become the gansters of the universe.
"...a major reason why we’re so inactive is that we have built houses, streets, roads and schools too “spread out” to walk between, creating the type of low-density urban design known as “sprawl.”"
Yea, so? That's the way most of us like it. I'm sure if we were all crammed into high rise apartments and walked everywhere and lived like people in NY city, we'd be healthier? Yea right!
That's the way most of us like it.
Yep. It's the American dream.
Some years ago, I was offered a job at the University of Texas, Odessa. When I visited, I was really surprised that in the suburbs around the University, there were no sidewalks or cross walks. You couldn't go anywhere on foot without walking through peoples lawns or out in the street - and the drivers were not particularly accomodating to pedestrians. It wasn't like Portland where there are areas without sidewalks but there are dirt paths for walking, there was simply no place to walk there. According to people at the University, anyone who walked, biked, or jogged was looked on as some type of a freak. If you wanted to go down to the convenience store on the corner, you drove. I passed on the job. Since that was near the stomping ground of George Dubya, I am surprised he became such a jogging fanatic, but I guess that was part of his anti-alcoholic regimin.
[quote]I'm sure if we were all crammed into high rise apartments and walked everywhere and lived like people in NY city, we'd be healthier? Yea right![quote]
Quite possibly.
Studies have shown that people that live on the second floors of buildings tend to be healthiest, as they are the ones most likely to take the stairs.
Urban Sprawl is definitely a huge problem in this country. That said, I'm not really sure it's that big of a factor in causing obesity. One could easily counter the claims if they had a push mower for their 1/2 acre of grass that they need to show off with a weekly mowing.
I remember reading an editorial by a guy who loves to walk. Forget the airport, but he flew in, then wished to walk to his hotel, which was only a few hundred yards away. Everyone thought he was nuts. He actually walked, but it involved crossing busy roads, going over gaurd rails, ect.
Next time he flew there he said he gave in. Waited 20 minutes for the shuttle. Spent another 20 minutes in traffic. Drove 5 miles to go 500 yards or so.
Then went into a rant about how stupid it was that there were no walkways or anything designed in so that people could choose to walk such a short distance.
It's amazing how many neighborhoods have no sidewalks, or short isolated sections of sidewalks. Always prefered neighborhoods with sidewalks, but quite often there's one block of sidewalk then a 3-4 block lapse, then a couple blocks with sidewalks, then a lapse, then 1/2 a block with, then without. Might as well not be any.
I like side walks because it gives kids a place to ride their bike, it might be illegal to ride a bike on a side walk, but who's going to give a 8 y/o a ticket? Much safer then having them ride in the street, and much more predictable as to what the kid might do when you're driving by.
but then again kids prefer to play in the street anyway so...Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, amateurs built the ark, Professionals build the Titanic.
Fortunately, we have a nice sidewalk in front of our house. It extends our entire block, and around the corner for 1/2 a block. Our kids can ride on that to their hearts content. Going in the street gets the bikes taken away for a few days. That only had to happen once each for 2 of the children. The third hasn't done that at all, preferring to learn by example.
Living on a busy street, if there wasn't a sidewalk, I'd probably have added one.
Our last house, the sidewalk stopped at our yard, but being on a one block street with almost no traffic, it wasn't much of an issue.
I'm lucky to have a street most of the year at all. Rural area lake community, tar&chip roads/trails, snow removal is a joke. Every house w/in a mile has a 4wd in the driveway....
Mike
So you must be obese according to this article we're discussing.
Well, I ain't skinny that's fer sure.
Heh...I'm not skinny anymore either. Gained about 30# since I moved to the sticks, and quit smoking.
Well youngins, when I was a lad I walked 3 miles to school, no city buses in our small town...(until I got to high school and got my driver's license and my customized 49 Chevy, that is, then any excuse to drive a couple of blocks...)
Another reason cited for the alarming increase in obesity is that the parents are afraid to let kids walk to school for fear of stranger abduction. Of course the incidence of stranger abduction is about 1 in 600,000 while the odds of getting killed in an automobile accident is about 1 in 7,000 with the odds of getting injured in a car being much higher still...
Credit our national media in its efficiency of making the very unusual seem like a big threat...
What are the statistics of a child getting hurt or killed in a school bus? That to me seems the best option over driving them or letting them walk.
The statistics for the last decade are somewhere around an average of 6 kids per year killed in school bus accidents. I think that would put the odds somewhere in the millions to one. However, riding the school bus doesn't do much for fighting the flab in our nations youth (except for running to the bus stop when they oversleep...) And of course, that doesn't count all the people asphixiated when following a school bus from all the black diesel smoke the bellow out...
It's all very sad really. I used to walk or ride my bike a mile to school and neither I nor my parents thought twice about it. Now I'm afraid to walk in town because I'll get run over and I'm afraid to let my kids out of site because I'm afraid some older boy or man will steal them away and rape and kill them, or they'll get run over by a drunk driver, or a dozen other horrible things to imagine. It's unfortunate for them because they are the ones that suffer.
Amen to that brother....we all want space of our own, yet we also want wide open spaces...can`t eat our cake and have it too.J. D. Reynolds
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"DO IT RIGHT, DO IT ONCE"
I eat my cake during my 45 minute commute. I have it, why not eat it?
They may be on to something, but I live in a big city and as dense as it is, it is not friendly to walking, esp at night. Far cry from when I was a teen.
I'm practically willing to work for minimum wage in order to walk to work. We have a live/work village that has done well, but the traffic is still horrid. Some areas are doing a better job of planning, but that is a rarity.
Lack of exercise is certainly a problem, but eating habits are more likely to be the culprit IMO.
Some things this statistical analysis seems to forget about include aging, the prevalence of desk jobs, eating habits, and income level. And I think the big one is the obsession with cars - most everyone takes their car everywhere, right? Even to go a half mile to the corner store (now a gas station convenience store). Subdivision design is more a symptom, I think. I know there are developers & city planners out there who keep an eye toward things like that, but the ones around here simply throw up the biggest houses they can as quickly as they can so they can move on to the next ones. Forethought is not a word you'll hear much.
ITA and could talk for days abt these probs. Foresight? Ha! My city decided we didn't need any "planners." Whoa, out of control growth w/no infrastructure (no parks, libraries, fire stations, etc.) makes us look like Los Angeles.
My particular neighborhood was victim to the developers who razed old homes and put up ugly condos, just for the $. Then they left town and did it to Idaho. Now they're back to do it to Oceanside, the town that separates San Diego from Los Angeles for all practical purposes.
most subdivisions these days are not designed for walking, meandering streets, no sidewalks, everything is designed for automobile use
i live an older section of a city, and on weekends i walk or bike everywhere
sure there's a connection between obesity and subdivision design
I think that's the key, "everything is designed for automobile use." Cars are the American obsession, so why bother planning for NOT using them? Sidewalks? That would cut into profits. I think most times "subdivision design" is an oxymoron. The McMansion syndrome includes cars, well, SUVs, too. In my area, they're planning to add and connect several bike paths, but these are afterthoughts, and every new section involves a fight between advocates & opponents.
Lets see, suburban sprawl took off in the 50's and 60's; Americn started getting fat in the 90's; the education system started going downhill in the 50's; Republican party membership started growing in the 70's; Robert Fulton invented the steam engine in 1807; TV became a vaste wasteland in the 1950's. Hats were invented in prehistoric times, aluminum foil was invented at the same time as black helicopters.
I think I'm seeing a trend here ....
_______________________
10 .... I have laid the foundation like an expert builder. Now others are building on it. But whoever is building on this foundation must be very careful.
11 For no one can lay any other foundation than the one we already have--Jesus Christ.
1 Corinthians 3:10-11