Activity inequality | Hacker News Reader

Activity inequality

activityinequality.stanford.edu

85 pointsmgalka20 comments

I don't disagree that people aren't getting all the steps they need, but it seems like there's a pattern where hotter areas have less 'activity' (step count).

Central America, Northern South America, Northern Africa, and the Middle East seem particularly bad.

Looking at the "walkability" graph, you see that a lot of the cities listed as the worst (Arlington, Forth Worth, San Antonio) are in Texas, where it's pretty hot.

Living in Las Vegas, I totally get this. You just don't go outside in the day time, which can put a crimp on activity.

On the flip side, in the winter it's very nice, and is the perfect time to go outside and get some exercise.

I live in a hot, humid area, and there are many people who don't go outside because of the discomfort. That said, I also have young kids, so my cohort actually is outside for hours per day year-round, and it's really not that bad when you get acclimated. The cities you list in TX, I think, are very car-friendly and developed recently (maybe not San Antonio), which is such a huge part of the problem. Commercial developments aren't made for walking and residential developments are segregated and often lack sidewalks. It's terrible.

I walk more when I am in San Francisco (where I live) partially because I find the walks interesting. The same was true when I lived in DC. When I am in an area where the walks lack flavor, I have to consciously get myself to move.

I had tried running over the years, mostly on treadmills, and never really done more than six miles: I decided I far preferred weightlifting (and sports).

When I left my job and was gymless for a short period, I started running along the water in San Francisco after not having run for several years. Within two weeks, I was doing about ten miles. It's really hard to overestimate how much easier and more pleasant beautiful surroundings make walking and running. (Temperate weather 365 days a year doesn't hurt either).

Running on a treadmill is extremely boring. Weight lifting is fun.

Running barefoot outside---if you can either find a good place for it or the courage to declare your current place good enough, is a thing of joy.

(My current home, London, basically has temperate weather all year round. It doesn't really get cold here.)

Yep, in practice if an area is "car friendly" that always translates to "walking hostile". Because cars take up so much space to move and to park, building around them necessarily means undermining every other mode of transportation.

Yep. I lived in Austin for a summer. 104 daily. I put on shorts and a tank top and biked miles into town, up plenty of hills both ways.

Humans have sweat! We we're built for the heat! We can survive just fine in the arctic too. We're the most adaptable species on Earth.

You have to get in shape, but that's another issue...

It seems there's a natural experiment at hand to determine the actual effect of temperature on these outcomes.

The temperature changes at different times during the year, and during different individual days and months. So, how do temperature shifts affect the results with the place and people being the same?

I've lived abroad all over but make my home base in San Antonio, TX. I can speak to this somewhat. Part of it is definitely the weather, but a bigger piece is a general lack of walkability.

For instance, in most places I've lived abroad I can walk for 5-7 minutes from my residence to a handful of places to eat lunch. In San Antonio, the closest restaurant (which I don't want to eat at for health reasons) is a 17 minute walk.

In other places I've lived when you're walking you are surrounded by something worth seeing, something interesting. Parks, interesting architecture, public artwork, other people, etc. In San Antonio, from where I live a walk would be nothing but highways, cookie cutter houses, and cookie cutter apartments for hours on foot before I got to see anything interesting. Prague for instance has a little bit of art in everything, which makes it interesting. Even the sidewalks themselves are patterned on opposing sides of the street and change between districts and sections to be artistic.

In other places I've lived for longer distances it's a simple and quick matter to access public transport on foot and then to continue on foot from where you get dropped off. In San Antonio, I'd need to walk 17 minutes to the nearest bus stop, then I have a long bus ride with multiple transfers to get to anywhere near a walkable part of the city from my residence.

These cities in the US are fundamentally built with cars in mind first and foremost, have almost no public transport, and have zero attempt to make them even remotely walkable. The weather is just a small piece. I could wear a hat and get over the heat since it's mostly dry heat here, but you can't get over the fact there's nothing to /do/ or /see/ or /get to/ on foot. Walking has no purpose here. I didn't walk everywhere just for my health when I was abroad, I did it because it was useful and efficient and fun.

I'm skeptical of that interpretation given how Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore score near the top. All three are very hot and humid places.

1. Demographics are not controlled for

2. Temperature variations are not accounted for.

3. "The cost to exercise" (e.g. cost to live in walkable areas, average cost of gyms, etc.) is not accounted for.

Furthermore, the website (haven't read the paper yet) implies walkability is always good. Walking around during the summer time in a hot climate like Texas will get you killed [1]

The analysis is obviously good, however it basically says what's already obvious, rich people exercise more (in the case of United States). Is there something inherent in the areas that make people more or less likely to exercise or is it the demographics? Most of the evidence points to the latter. This raises the question: since you inherently can't change your demographic, what difference does it make?

[1] This happened just a couple weeks ago:

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2017/06/23/texas-boy-scout-die...

"Inequality" is a bizarre concept to apply here -- and it seems it's used to signal social justice virtue: it's unfair that people in more successful economies have time for exercise and recreation, and/or that their cultural norms includes the concept of "healthy lifestyle".

"difference" would be a better adjective. It would describe it without adding word which can carry unwanted inference.

Catchy headline for left leaning types.

Inequality is not just being used colloquially here.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient

Agreed, there are red flags. All their data comes from this smartphone app (717,527 users):

  Download Argus now! Join MILLIONS and download the 
  world’s ONLY free all-in-one health & fitness app that 
  uses JUST your phone (no costly devices needed) and 
  conquer your goals! We have a super-easy calorie 
  counter with barcode scanner and massive food database.

As a scientist I would have rejected this Nature paper based on highly biased data collection.

I wonder WHO (in the sense of only a subset of a given population) would download and install that "all-in-one" tool.

I would guess:

1) people somehow interested in their fitness

2) people having some dietary issues (more probably believing to be more fat than what they should be and looking for a shortcut to get slimmer)

Customer of type #1 will likely do lots of steps, while customer of type #2 is more likely to do much less.

It is very possible that in whole coutries there is a preponderance of type #1 and in other ones of type #2.

I agree with most of your comment, but hiking for hours is pretty substantially different from the amount of walking you do in walkable areas. Particularly because, by definition they have shade and places you can stop for cool drinks etc. Thr notion that walkable areas aren't always good is a pretty silly conclusion to draw from the tragedy you cited.

You really ought to read the paper.

1. They do control for demographics.

2. They do account for temperature, by comparing geographically close cities with different activity inequality levels.

3. They do account for "cost". They repeatedly compare cities and countries with roughly the same income distributions.

Also, as far as I can tell, the paper draws _exactly_ the opposite conclusions as what you state. In no way do they claim that rich people exercise more, nor do they claim that demographics have a strong correlation with exercise.

From what I read, they come to two conclusions:

-There is a correlation between activity inequality and obesity.

-There is a negative correlation between activity inequality and walkability.

Looks more like a map of smartphone + fitness tracker equality.

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