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Comment by cpursley | Hacker News Reader

It's the build-environment (how cities are designed). Everything is America is segregated, especially by income, age and race to an extent. Culture (fitness and food) also play a role. There's a reason more walkable places like Denver and NYC have healthier people.

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I’ve observed in Australia, the closer you are to the CBD (the main city postcode), the healthier the people are, once you get to the outer suburbs is like an entirely different country. The streets look different, the people are all obese, the cars are bigger, etc.

I honestly think that we don’t put enough emphasis on how bad cars are for your health.

Denver is walkable? I'd have called it "sprawling".

At first glance it looks sprawly but then visiting there you realize most of those tract housing developments open up in the back to some walk and bike trail network, which remain sunny dry and mild much of winter (the real snow is in the mountains denver is frequently bone dry), and a good portion of the population is getting 50 days out of their epic or ikon pass plus engaging in some summer outdoor hobby.

Fifty years ago, one heard that Colfax Avenue was the longest street in the US, or maybe the world. I got a lot of exercise in my Denver days, some of it running or hiking, but I also spent a lot of time in cars.

I read something recently that said the rise of American suburbia can be traced to increased rates of crime in the cities due to immigrant populations (this was over the last 50 years or so).

Now that Europe has seen such a huge increase in immigrant populations (and the corresponding crime increases), perhaps suburban-type environments will become more desirable there in the near future.

What you are referring to is called "white flight" and the causes were more complex than crime or immigration.

The casual link between immigration and crime is generally agreed to be false. So whatever you read that claimed immigration caused crime to go up seems incorrect.

> The causal link between immigration and crime is generally agreed to be false

I'm really curious - do you know of anything I could read on that?

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