California is vast, so there are many areas that are almost comically walk-proof, but there are also cities with a high average "walk score".
I live in a SoCal coastal city of 60K which has a fairly low "walk score" of 43. The services I'd need on a regular basis are in the neighborhood of a 20-45m walk (one way).
Downside to walking is a weekly family shop isn't easy to carry around.
right now i live a block down from a grocery store and a grocery run is 15 minutes tops.
because grocery shopping was such a hassle in the suburbs we did it once a week and tried to buy as much as possible to avoid going back. in the city i just grab whatever is on my list walking home from the train station.
The trick is that you pick stuff up “on your way home”, you aren’t making extra dedicated trips. Not hard to supplement with grocery deliveries these days either.
When I think back to the weekly grocery shopping I did with my parents as a kid? Those huge carts full of food, having to cover the entire store, then hauling it amd packing it in the car, then all the unpacking and organizing sorting and storing some of it in the main fridge and some in the backup fridge some in the pantry … to me that seems like way more hassle than speading the work out.
I have kids, tried different systems, more and smaller trips works for us. Probably it’s one of those things that everyone works out differently
What about that is a hassle?
Surely you mean "Unnecessarily oversized cars"
I wish American towns and cities were built in the traditional 4-over-1 style of places like Amsterdam, so that even in densely populated areas there was room for shops and restaurants that could survive off of foot traffic. When visiting old European cities not built around automotive infrastructure, it was so easy to get 5+ miles of walking in every day because everything is so close together.
Median age increased from 35.3 in 2000 to 38.6 today.
I suspect an increase in using computers both at work and home has played a role.
Urbanization has increased from 79% in 2000 to 83%, among everything else I think fewer people are doing yard work.
> A majority of infrastructure in the US makes it extremely hard to be healthy
This is a copout.The only hard thing about being healthy is having the discipline to do so. Certainly more than 6.8% of people have the means to have healthy diet and they choose not to. There are definitely extreme cases of poverty where it would be difficult (which people who are well above that will use as an example to make themselves feel better about their choices) but I'd argue it's still very reasonable to be able to lead a very healthy lifestyle.
We're fat as hell because we live a life of extreme abundance.
A combination of brutal heat and lack of pedestrian friendly routes means almost no one walks.
They’re pretty healthy though. Lots of veggies and being fat is bad.
We could try that too!
I was working in Melbourne, staying near St. Kilda, and was told by some colleagues "don't go down street X at night", so I went down street X at night, had a nice meal there, walked back, no fucking worries at all.
Next morning I heard on the news that someone had been stabbed to death on that street within half an hour of my being out and about there.
The thing is, though, if you're not out causing trouble or selling drugs or buying drugs, or a member of the various competing underworlds, then you're likely to be totally fine. The stabbing was drug related.
It's a bad neighborhood if you're part of what makes it a bad neighborhood - in this case, at least.
I think you partially addressed that already with the privilege part. I know my city has rough areas that definitely have an increased risk of getting mugged, robbed or just jumped for no reason. Knowing that is enough to keep me from going around there unless I have a reason.
We weren’t part of the problem, we were just kids. But it’s easy to get pulled in when you grow up like that. There’s a big difference between visiting or driving through and growing up in such a place where you feel like you always had to watch your back. Because you spend more time in such a place, it increases your chances of bad things happening.
But it also meant, playing around the streets with the neighborhood kids, great food, neighbors giving each other things like food and essentials, a sort of camaraderie that we had each other’s back. Not everything was bad. However, you never feel truly safe.
Being a big dude means people are less likely to start something.
Being a white dude means people don't really even notice you unless you're starting something.
Call it privilege I suppose.
There needs to be good frequent public transport on dedicated rails or priority lanes, so it is faster than a car can be. Good bicycle infrastructure so people want to take the bike. It's crazy that many people see cycling as some kind of sport or free time activity, while it is for so many people a serious way to commute to work or get the groceries or visit family.
But it is so cultural, so embedded in society, it is probably never going to be fixed. Also probably thanks to the motorvehicle lobby.
food deserts are real.
not having enough free time to exercise is real.