The Crisis in American Walking
slate.com
slate.com
I walk to work every day in seven minutes[1]. The city maintains a large forested park that is a 5 minute walk from main street.
Every single weekend I walk to one of the fine cafes that exist on or around main street for breakfast. On workdays at lunch I have a wide array of restaurants, all within very reasonable walking distance. I purchase the fine beers I drink from the same building I work in[2].
Simply taking walks I can peruse downtown, or head north to the historic district and walk among the Victorian-era houses (I am living in one, built 1840, renting out the extra rooms to friends to make a kind of communal house), or I can go to the northern park and follow rail tracks through the woods, maybe swim in the Merrimack river (dangerous to amateurs but very fun), or go to Mine Falls by main street and stroll through the surprisingly deep woods in the heart of the little city.
I can go days without needing to use my car. I see walking as the norm in my life. My friends treat it as an eccentric novelty. I fear the day that I won't be able to walk to work anymore, and the simple walkable pleasures of my town are a big factor in not taking a job in SV.
Suburbs don't have to be horrible places, but as designed they seem very lacking.
[2] Warning, a lot of NH businesses have websites stuck in 1995! http://www.boomchugalug.com/
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
Since Denver is a very compact city at the core, I can get anywhere in the central city on foot. All the major sports stadiums and major cultural attractions are within a mile or two of each other. Most of the cities best bars and restaurants are clustered around the city center.
If you can live and work Downtown...it's just an amazing place to live. It's a major city that is extraordinarily approachable.
I'm now living 6 miles out in Olde Town Arvada. It's actually a neat walkable area with coffee shops, brewpubs, etc., although there are no major tech employers within walking distance. (I work from home.)
I've done far less formal exercise these days than I ever have at any point in my life, yet I'm still about the same weight. I owe it all to walking, including the four-story walkup.
When I go home to Oregon, we're constantly in the car. "Getting a coffee" consists of getting in a car, driving for 5 minutes, grabbing a to-go cup at Starbucks and driving back home... I can't really do it anymore.
And even now, on the sonorous hums and curves of Sandy Blvd, you may find yourself cycling next to several 'mudded' pickups, and called things that are hateful and confusing.
You can put the hipster in Oregon, but you can't take the redneck out.
I was recently in Calgary, and felt alone amidst giant buildings. It was quite off-putting.
Walk through an old city. Even in the victorian era, where families were packed in single rooms with no running water, they were just a 5-10 minute walk from stately townhouses of the well-to-do.
Now, we feel the need to separate ourselves with berms and fences.
Aside from things like 18th-century manor houses - a tiny proportion of any country's population, and absolutely stuffed with working-class servants - the lack of motorized transit meant that upper-class neighbourhoods were usually right in the centre of the city, within walking distance of the poorer areas. You really just have to look at NYC or London to see that. 19th century mansions are not that far from the historically poor areas. And even those people who did own manor houses usually had a townhouse. It wasn't until trains, subways, and automobiles arrived in the mid-20th century that commuting between the business centre and exclusive suburbs became possible.
After one country took this attitude to unfortunate extremes a couple of generations ago - we have tried to all get along a bit better.
Its a terrible thing to think but I distinctly remember being grateful for the particulary large amount of light my skin happens to reflect that night.
If 'fine' means not hassled or delayed in any way, then it already didn't work out 'fine'. If you're willing to add on another hour or two waiting, perhaps the night, waiting at the police station as 'fine', then you're still good.
I'm not sure if you're concerned that you would have been beaten or harmed? I'm sure it's not out of the question, it never is, but so long as you remained peacable as you explained it to the officer, I'm guessing it wasn't likely.
Every district / cop / municipality is of course different though.
I'm not saying it wouldn't be inconvenient, but fear of inconvenience isn't necessarily a great reason to lay down your civil rights.
That said, I don't mean to imply any judgement, I'm just curious as to "what would have happened". I've been in a number of scenarios similar to this one and have never been beaten, attacked, or in court spending a great deal to defend myself. Not to say it couldn't easily have happened, every encounter is different.
I had a job where I walked to work .7 miles and people would ask me almost every day if I need a ride home.
Someone told me that the few remaining buses in the town should be eliminated because they only service the scum and losers of society.
I've had 4 cars attempt to hit me on my bicycle because they felt and yelled that I should be riding on the sidewalk.
Of course, here in Colorado, it's not uncommon at all to find people walking or biking even way out in the suburbs. So I suppose attitudes vary greatly by region.
http://mikejmoran.typepad.com/files/pedestrian-by-bradbury-1...
First you just look weird here when you walk somewhere and you are the only person walking in the street. Drivers usually look at you like you are crazy (especially if you walk in the evening when it's getting dark).
The second and most annoying thing is that sidewalks here can end suddenly without a warning. You can walk somewhere enjoying the nice weather and the sidewalk ends suddenly! WTF? You have to turn back or continue walking using the side of the road looking even more weird.
And the most strange thing is that Americans use their cars to drive to places located within just a couple of thousand feet from their home. For a person from Europe THIS is really weird.
One of the many reasons why I will probably not be moving back to the suburbs if I can possibly avoid it. Most the others seem to center on walking, too: Not being able to walk to the grocery store; not being stuck in a situation where going out to the bar would be synonymous with drinking and driving, not spending my after-dinner strolls in a ditch. . .
That's definitely true. When I lived in Strasbourg I thought nothing of walking 20 minutes to the hypermarche. I enjoyed it. Now, back in America, I live ~5 minutes from a major grocery store but I would never walk there.
Not only are there no sidewalks but I'd have to cross a major street and the intersection doesn't have pedestrian signals. It'd be suicide.
And this isn't Middle of Nowhere, USA. I live in the middle of San Antonio, TX. Five minutes from the Riverwalk. It's nuts but it's the way it is.
(Though the Texas heat may have something to do with not walking as well)
Note that I'm not in particularly good shape and a walk of this magnitude is not at all difficult. I arrive at work every day refreshed, alert and in a good mood, and I arrive home after work feeling the same way.
You couldn't pay me enough to take a job at which I was forced to drive, though I wouldn't mind cycling to work if the distance was too long to walk in a reasonable time.
It makes you look forward to spring. I live in a place that typically has bad winters, so the prospect of breaking my neck on ice is not very appealing!
I now live in Vancouver and despite temperature it gets damp enough that movement without sweating is well nigh impossible. Good thing I work at a pool and don't give a damn.
Either way cycling is still better.
I had a ruptured disk and a spinal fusion a few years ago that went really well.... and I'm a little paranoid about keeping it that way!
since i put the studded tires on, i have not slipped once. i haven't even come close to slipping to be honest. i pretty much rie as i would on clear, dry asphalt.
New Orleans fits this as well, as I also lived in the Tremé. I biked and walked everywhere. It was great
Running alongside the freeway is an access road where all the on-off ramps feed. It has a wide sidewalk along the side and it was only a couple of junctions between the hotel and the site I was visiting so I walked.
A police car immediately pulled up to ask where I was going and why? Fortunately the English accent convinced them I was obviously merely some pinko-commie weirdo and not a threat to Houston society.
Maybe it was one of the little townships that still refuses to integrate into the ever-expanding maw of Houston (think West U area)?
It's better than most, I agree, but still a far cry from NYC, Boston, or SF.
Within one block of my house is a park, a subway stop, a mid sized mall, a variety of restaurants etc. I find it's easier to walk to most places in the area than get in my car and then look for parking. Honestly, most of the high density parts of Arlington Virginia are vary walkable because it's both high density and mixed use.
According to this paper [1], mean comfortable walking speed for a male in his twenties is 253.3 cm/s (~5.67 mph). Assuming you are male and in your twenties, this means it takes you ~39 mins to work each way, not including stopping at intersections, etc. Contrast this to ~15 mins each way in a car.
This means the cost/benefit would go something like this:
Walking:
(+) 78 mins/day commuting + exercise
(+) Mood heightened
(-) Lesser exercise (walking vs 1 hr at the gym where, presumably, you'd do more than walk)
Driving/Gym:
(-) 90 mins/day communting + exercise
(-) Mood not heightened
(+) Better exercise
(+) More flexibility (want to go more than a couple miles for lunch? Sorry.)
My guess is that most people choose option 2 for the flexibility alone. This allows them to do their exercise when they want to. Whether or not they will is another story.
[1] http://ageing.oxfordjournals.org/content/26/1/15.full.pdf
I'm not sure about your speed calculations - average adult walking speed is generally understood to be around 5-6 km/h (3-3.75 mph). I'm a male in my late 30s and I generally walk at a relatively brisk 7-8 km/h (4.3-5 mph).
As it happens, my walk home is about twice as long as my walk to work, since I pick up my son from school along the way. My walk to work takes about 20 minutes and the walk home takes around 45-50 (part of it at a child's brisk pace).
> This means the cost/benefit would go something like this:
You're missing some factors from your cost/benefit analysis.
* Walking to work means we only need 1 family car. That saves $10,000 a year in direct ownership costs, not including paying for parking.
* If I drove instead of walking, I would not use the time saved for exercise at a gym (know thyself), so I would simply miss that daily exercise. But if my commute just happens to constitute daily exercise, so be it.
* There are about a dozen restaurants within a 5-10 minute walk of my office, including some of the best places in the city. (However, I'm cheap and almost always pack a lunch anyway.)
* Downtown, not having a car confers more flexibility because I don't have to figure out where to park it.
* If I do need more transportation flexibility on a given day, I can always take my bike to work that day.
It's been my experience that 3 mph (the speed I tend to default to) is considered fast by most of my peers. I'm in my twenties.
That paper is from 1997. I suspect a lot has changed.
Does not compute. A trip of 3.7 miles at a speed of 5 miles per hour would take ~45 minutes. If you can actually walk your 6 km commute in 20 minutes, you should quit your job and start competing in Olympic race walking, since you are apparently outpacing the reigning world champion [1].
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2urNVmKnEaQ
For comfy gaits, the study reported 127.2 cm/s for women (2.8 mph) and 146.2 cm/s for men (3.2 mph). That matches my own experience walking and hiking.
Sometimes I ride my bike, which feels safer, if for no other reason than those two blocks go by awfully fast and an assailant on foot could not easily catch up to me, but biking feels like a lot more work than walking. I have to gear up, and carry my bike down the stairs from my apartment, and bike three stories up the parking garage for our office once I get there (the building manager hates bicycles, and so you cannot take them up the stairs/elevator). I also feel like one of these days I'm going to be hit and killed in that garage. I feel that way even in my car (well, at least in my car I probably wouldn't die. On my bike? Maybe). The visibility around the corners is terrible and people seem to drive through that garage like maniacs.
Unfortunately, I have night owl tendencies and even if I didn't, I work for a startup and often need to work late nights, so I can't just arrange my schedule to know I can walk home before it's dark.
I'm not specifically aware of gender-specific data related to walking (though now I'm going to see what's out there), but I've looked at the issue with respect to cycling and there's a strong correlation between the gender balance of cyclists in a city and the city's material commitment to being bikeable.
Have you considered getting mace?
It's 3-4am that I don't feel safe. I can't change my route, any detours I could take would only take me through even less safe areas.
I've considered mace/pepper spray but quite honestly I'd rather just avoid the possibility altogether. About a year ago there was homeless woman killed in that area.
I also am a bit of a runner... my plan, if I get in trouble, is to just book it. Or, throw my wallet at them and run.
not cheap but easily transportable indoors and out. you can store it by your desk in a bag. i see them all over dublin as it's cheaper ultimately to keep your bike by your side than lock them in a public place. and also been brought on public transport.
From the age of 9 I went by bike to school each day. I loved riding that bike — such a freedom. I never thought about those 14 km back and forth[2]. From and to school was just about getting there. After school involved more activities.
Currently I reside on one of the most bicycle friendly cities in the world. Approximately 40% use their bike to work in Copenhagen. I always use my bike when I can. During the summer we sometimes bike around the isle of Amager. It's 42 KM all the way around, but the trip takes you through so many different scenes of nature.
To me, getting around by foot or bike, is freedom. It's the only way I know. I can drive a traktor, but have never driven a car.
[1] http://g.api.no/obscura/pub/978x1200r/04135/1326712053000_Sp... [2] http://g.co/maps/nck6s [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Porsche_Traktor_Diesel_Sup...
The point is, there are advantages to living in an area that may not be as walkable...
But yes, the proximity is nice :)
I live in a house with a proper yard. It's not suburban big (1100 ft^2 house on a 4500 ft^2 lot), but it's really nice. I have a really cool grocery store 5 blocks away. I also have a small lake (that you can boat on) 6 blocks away in the other direction. I have a 40+ bars and restaurants within a mile of our house. Downtown is two miles down the hill, passing through one of the hottest neighborhoods in the city which adds a bunch more bars and restaurants to the mix. I routinely walk or bike to all of these places. My car is parked 90% of the time. We mainly use it for trips to Ikea or to the mountains.
Oh and my house, in an amazing neighborhood, was less than $300K two years ago:)
So, it's close to infuriating when I encounter the "soccer" moms in their SUVs who won't walk a single block or the kook at work who would give me a hard time for walking half a mile (.8km) to lunch on a beautiful day. Though, after I pointed out my guns and his gut the smug comments declined.
You're highlighting something a lot of people don't understand about LA - there are tons of walkable neighborhoods in LA, the problem is traveling from neighborhood to neighborhood takes forever and requires a car.
LA was originally a dozen different cities, all walkable, all connected by good public transport. It's very, very slowly returning to that ideal but light rail and subway are about 25 years behind where it could be.
With the accelerated transit programs/taxes (new light rail, new subways, new bus lines) currently underway, the gaining popularity of biking, and the increasing telecommuting, it'll get better. Eventually. :)
I was interviewed once in Mountain View in 2006 and I remembered walking on El Camino Real rd between Palo Alto and Sunnyvale on 100F July. I was the only one walking on the road and it is pain in ass to cross road since the traffic system is designed for cars. But I still remember vividly the scenes along El Camino Real between Palo Alto to Sunnyvale until now, even just one day in my life.
But for the most part the cities are much more pedestrian scale and walkable just a short distance away from this road. "Never judge a city by its El Camino Real"; it's usually one of the least pleasant parts...
Auto manufacturers are pretty good at protecting the people inside the car, but we're not so good at protecting pedestrians.
http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx
The second half is, of course, completely correct.
(Edit: please read "making shit up" as "your source is inaccurate")
My Walk Score means a lot to me [1]; if you're looking for a new place to live, Walk Score's apartment-finding service is the best tool I know [2]. The commute times feature is a particularly interesting bit of tech.
[1] Warning: I am irretrievably biased (see my profile.)
One morning, a sheriff's deputy and his partner pulled up, told me to stop, and started asking me wth I was doing at 5am. They were amazed that I would get up that early to watch birds...
Nowadays my hometown is a lot more "trendy" and the estuary is surrounded by multi-million dollar homes. And I wouldn't expect that an unaccompanied minor would be greatly appreciated by the LE community, nor would a kid that age be as safe as I was.
The bias to favor the car is clearly evident. Who is the customer? The car or the driver?
Obviously political and economical interest of the terrains to be built have priority over all this nonsense...
As an aside, is anyone else annoyed by the appearance of the word "crisis" in the title of every damn news story? A crisis implies immediate danger. The lack of walking Americans is not a crisis. Global warming is not a crisis. Peak oil is not a crisis. These things are all problems, to be sure, but problems we have some time to deal with. Let's save the word for situations where it applies.
I'm originally from Charleston, SC. I went back there recently because of a family member in the hospital, and I realized how much I really love that city simply because walking around and biking is so nice. The weather is nice, the streets are nice, greenspace everywhere, and you can literally walk the width of the peninsula in 15 minutes.
I wish more cities were like that.
An awful lot of Canadians, myself included, avoid drive-through ATMs, and instead park and walk into the bank. And sometimes, when the bank's busy, we walk up to the the drive-through ATM.
I did this once when I was a co-op student in Starkville, MS, and got some really, really strange looks.
At In-and-out burger (the one reason good to live in Ca) there is generally a walk-up window by the drive-through so you can park and beat the queue.
If you feel this is un-america you could always leave the engine running while you wait.
But about the only time I do pay with cash nowadays is a drive through KFC, perhaps they dont trust people to not drive off with their portable pin&chip terminals...
(By the way, I lived in Starkville in my college years, and also had some strange looks as a pedestrian...)
You usually can't walk up to a drive through. Although my wife has ridden horses to the McDonalds drive through window before...
Association != causation. While the picture this caption is from is indeed ridiculous (grandmother driving her daughter essentially to the end of her driveway for the school bus), the implication seems to be that Americans walking less somehow has a causative effect in skyrocketing obesity rates. This seems entirely wimpy and facile.
Here's an alternative: there exists an underlying metabolic disorder that develops in a large proportion of the population, in response to something new in our environment ( new compared to pre 1950's ). A major effect that this disorder has is to partition a large part of our calorie intake towards fat storage. Now we have less energy available for expenditure, and as a consequence we either eat more or behave more sedentarily. Sedentary behavior will be a compensatory effect, that will indeed associate with obesity ( as measured by observational studies, like the one mentioned).
A good candidate for such malady would be insulin resistance [1] (and more generally, metabolic syndrome); Gary Taubes makes a very compelling case [2] that this is indeed the case, and that the primary change(s) in our environment to cause these problems is our marked increase in sugar and refined carbohydrate consumption [3][4]. The same hypotheses also seem a good explanation for rising type II diabetes rates.
Now this is still a controversial topic [5], but my point this kind of explanation seems much stronger and more on-the-mark, than such flaccid ideas like 'americans are getting fat because they don't walk to school anymore'.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin_resistance [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Calories,_Bad_Calories [3] http://journeytoforever.org/farm_library/Cleave/cleave_ch2.h... [4] http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2012/02/by-2606-us-die... [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin_resistance#Causes
We had football practice twice a week (at 12 yo) with a game on Saturday.
She got a ride to the end of the driveway? Probably because she has a double-header soccer match that night. A soccer match at which some parents will get into a fistfight- but that's for another thread.
Someone athletic enough to play in a double-header soccer match wouldn't bat an eye at walking 100 feet down a driveway. As someone who played many sports in my earlier years, this line of reasoning seems completely off the mark.
(not making any comment about the article.)
Not for every kid, to be sure. But for a helluva lot of them.
I interpreted the article's point is that people avoid any form of physical activity at all cost. One example being driving a child to the end of a driveway instead of letting them walk. If physical activity is essential to maintaining one's health, it seems this sort of decision making would be detrimental to one's health.
I don't see why this is such an awful stance to take.
I completely agree that exercise is very important in maintaining health (exercise, especially weight-training is know to increase insulin sensitivity to some degree, for instance), I just think its role in weight-loss, for most people, is greatly exaggerated compared to fixing a diet which actively promotes fat storage (going beyond a caloric excess).
We've been telling overweight people to exercise more and eat less (esp. fat) for 40 years, it simply doesn't' seem to work [1].
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/magazine/tara-parker-pope-...
So, yes, it suggests that an increase in physical activity isn't an "easy" solution. However, I don't think it affects the point the article is making. People don't wake up to find themselves obese one day. It takes some time and effort to get there. And I would argue one of the biggest impacts on gaining weight is a lack of physical activity.
Not to mention that from my experience, avoiding physical activity has a self-enforcing effect. The more you avoid moving around, the more you want to avoid moving around.
I drive my son about half a mile to the school bus every morning. One of my neighbors drives their children from the house, down the driveway to the street to the same school bus.
Their driveway is just under half a mile long!
We're not encouraging laziness: the reason I (and I suspect the neighbor also) do it is because if we just let him walk, he'd screw around and not make it to the bus on time. Eleven year-olds do stuff like that.
He walks home from the bus because it doesn't matter if it takes him a few extra minutes to get home.
"Overweight people have a tendency to sit, while lean ones have trouble holding still and spend two hours more a day on their feet, pacing around and fidgeting, researchers are reporting in findings published today.
"The difference translates into about 350 calories a day, enough to produce a weight loss of 30 to 40 pounds in one year without trips to the gym - if only heavy people could act more restless, like thin ones."
....
"The director of the study, Dr. James Levine, an endocrinologist and nutritionist at the Mayo Clinic, said the findings offered hope to overweight people, suggesting that relatively simple and painless changes in their daily behavior, like making an effort to walk more and ride less, could help control weight."
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/28/health/28weight.html
I picked this one because it's the NY Times and Science, but there are numerous other sources available via Google.
That's exactly what I'm talking about. Most of us eat plentifully. If your metabolism is up to shape, you'll spend the extra calories fidgeting. That's what a lean person is. In this paradigm, a fat person is one who partitions off calories towards fat, regardless of physical activity. He then has to match expenditure to what's left.
A number of studies have shown that overweight people can make a difference just by walking around their home a bit more, and doing things in a more active way. For example, instead of sitting down to watch TV they could stand and do some ironing while watching tv. And then, when standing and ironing they can bounce a bit. Many of these seemingly trivial actions build into more exercise and better weight loss.
The fact that exercise causes weight loss has been borne out by numerous controlled experiments. Something I found via a quick search: https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.duke.car...
Also, Taubes' insulin nonsense has been debunked. Lets move on.
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/08/carbohydrate-h...
As for your hypothetical environmental cause, it must be extremely selective. For example, consider mixed income American neighborhoods (e.g., Harlem, Jersey City). This alleged environmental cause seems to primarily affect the lower income people. How does that happen? Are the yuppies with gym memberships and hipsters with their organic vegan raw paleo diets somehow immune?
Well, yes. As a paleo dieter, I can tell you I can't be eating more sugar than someone from the 1850s. My guess is that anyone conscious enough to be on a raw-vegan diet, doesn't either.
> This alleged environmental cause seems to primarily affect the lower income people.
My understanding is that refined carbohydrates and vegetable oils are cheap. Who was it that said that if you have $1.5 to spend on food, you're better off (calorically) buying potato chips than broccoli.
> Also, Taubes' insulin nonsense has been debunked. Lets move on.
I do suspect that it's simplistic. It's much better than the popular notion of calories-in/calories-out, though. That's why I said that it's controversial, but that it's the kind of thing, that's more on-the-mark than simply blaming sedentarity as a primary cause in obesity.
> The fact that exercise causes weight loss has been borne out by numerous controlled experiments. Something I found via a quick search: https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.duke.car....
OTOH, exercise makes you hungry. What's more interesting is whether exercise is effective long-term to cure obesity. I'd suspect not alone, but that it certainly helps.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1914974,00....
High fat/high sugar foods offer the most calories/dollar. So what? If you are fat you have no reason to maximize the number of calories you consume.
Similarly, if you wanted to maximize your salt intake, you can get the most salt per dollar by buying a canister of salt.
It's much better than the popular notion of calories-in/calories-out, though.
Cals in/cals out has been validated in many controlled experiments to be a good first approximation. Taubes' insulin theories have been debunked by experiments.
Incidentally, the standard picture doesn't blame sedentarity as the sole cause of obesity. It blames the combination of sedentarity and increased caloric consumption as the cause.
But the cause, whatever it is, is highly unlikely to be some sort of metabolic disorder. Fat people have a higher metabolic rate than thin people, not a lower one. Their bodies release fat more easily into the bloodstream, contra Taubes and others. They just eat a lot more.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC303803/
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.0954-6820.1969....
Well, the theory is that cheap vegetable oil and sugar causes these metabolic disorders which then causes obesity.
>Taubes' insulin theories have been debunked by experiments.
They're not his theories. He makes the point repeatedly in GCBC that they form part of modern, standard biochemistry. The only controversial points that he makes is that they should be applied to obesity research.
> Taubes' insulin theories have been debunked by experiments.
what are those experiments? My understanding is that carbohydrate-restricted diets generally fare better in terms of weight-loss, muscle-maintenance, and improvements in risk factors of chronic diseases:
http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/297/9/969.full http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eREuZEdMAVo
Apparently they results are best for people who are insulin resistant, as you might expect.
"PLASMA FREE FATTY ACID TURNOVER RATE IN OBESITY"
I'm not sure exactly what that means, is this referring just to the rate at which FFAs cross fat-cell membranes, or the rate of esterification and lipolysis? Because it's the latter that Taubes argues is primarily important.
I don't own a car for nearly 25 years. I'm a programmer for more than 35 years, and of course, I got a car with 18. But this first VW Golf told me a lesson, that driving a car and coding is incompatible. I crashed that car twice, after hacking through the night shift at a customer, driving home over fatigued. My second and last car was a BMW2002ti, it was fun, but hard to maintain. And I realized: I do not need a car!
Unlike other self employed, I do not need to carry heavy tools and equipment to serve my customer. And they pay for train and taxi cab, so I don't need a car to go to work. This was 25 years ago, when computer modems started to become brick size and cheap. Now I'm just 100ms away from my shop in Nashville, while sitting in Bremen Germany. A programmer does not need a car. No car could get me faster to work than the internet.
But a programmer needs a walk. Walking is like resting, for someone who sits in front of a computer while work. So I walk to buy my food, and I often just walk the imaginary dog. Walking to the lake, to my boat or to the boats house, just to relax, is one of my methods to attack difficult problems. My eyes can wander around, and legs move by them self, and my mind can drift around the problem, or even better about something completely different. I'll make a coffee, when I'm home, and often sit down immediately to code with much better productivity, than before the walk, when I was blocked. Walking is a way to get me into flow.
I'm currently living in the subs of a major German City. We have good public transport in Bremen, good bike lanes, and I'm faster to nearly anyplace in town, if I take the train, compared to car. But I also lived in the rural. Think about you have to carry your food, and your dogs food yourself over a distance of 5km/3miles, and suddenly a Pepsi becomes a luxury. Not owning a car for 25 years changed a lot of my life, not only when it comes to food, or when I comes to fitness. But most important when it comes to social life. Walking my neighborhood, to buy food, to relax, to talk with over the fence or in shop, is that part of my social life, where I can get contact with "normal" people. People who are not programmers, or belong to my peer group of friends from school, or to my yacht club.
I'm living in a cheap area, because I'm self employed, and reducing monthly cost, increases the runway. I'm not shy talking to a junky on the street. Well I have long hairs, beard and a hoodie also. The kids on the street greet me in the 'right' way to show respect. I helped people moving in, and often stay for a short barbecue or grill in neighbors gardens on my way home. Its important for a community that there is life outside the walls. That neighbors watch each other, especially in the cheaper areas. My ghetto is a good one. E.g. we have a new neighbor since January. An 82 year old lady from California, who came back to Germany because of health (insurance), and because she ran out of money. I saw her first when it was freezing cold, and she was standing there, in her plain white thin clothes in the supermarket. Half of the flats of my U-block here are rented out to Wohnungshilfe, a department of social welfare who have flats, for those who are in need, and can not find a flat on the normal market. Those could be people coming from jail, or in this case a bankrupt woman from California. It took less than 3 hours, to get her some warm clothes, a bed and warm blankets, and some furniture. I visit here regular, because our supermarket that is a mile away has no penut butter.
I own a small parcel in San Antioco, a Sardian island, and the people there have a special tradition called Passagiata. Every day after lunch, they walk the main street, up and down, again and again. Greet each other, talk a bit, drink a coffee or smoke a cigarette.
This kind of Mediterranean art of life is utterly lost in most modern cities. A suburb where people no longer walk, and talk, lost its soul and became a zombie of a town.