Older and better? (Kate Glicksberg for The New York Times)Many people opt for newer homes because they are cleaner, bigger and often have more amenities. But new research shows old houses in old neighborhoods may be better for your health.
University of Utah researchers found that people who live in older, more walkable neighborhoods are at lower risk for overweight and obesity. The study, to be published in the September issue of The American Journal of Preventive Medicine, tracked the body mass index of nearly a half million Salt Lake County residents in Utah. They found that neighborhoods built before 1950 tended to offer greater overall walkability because they had been designed for pedestrians. Newer neighborhoods often were designed primarily to facilitate car travel, the researchers noted.
“It is difficult for individuals to change their behavior,” wrote Ken Smith, co-author of the study and professor of family and consumer studies at the University of Utah. “But we can build environments that promote healthy behavior.”
Dr. Smith and colleagues used census data as well as height and weight information obtained from the drivers’ license records of 453,927 Salt Lake County residents between the ages of 25 and 64. They found that men, on average, weighed 10 pounds less if they lived in a walkable neighborhood versus a neighborhood less conducive to walking. The average woman weighed six pounds less.
“The data show that how and where we live can greatly affect our health,” Dr. Smith said. “Neighborhoods with higher fractions of residents who walk to work tell us that something beneficial about the neighborhood is promoting health.”
The research offers a blueprint for communities on better ways to design new developments to encourage healthful living. And for people shopping for homes, the lesson is to think about not just the house itself but whether the neighborhood is pedestrian-friendly, with sidewalks, bike and walking paths, low traffic and amenities like coffee shops or convenience stores that are within walking distance.
Last fall, Stanford Medicine Magazine also looked at the effect neighborhoods have on health. Researchers there found that among people who were trying to be more active, living in walkable neighborhoods dramatically improved their odds of exercising for at least two-and-a-half hours a week. In one study of people who were trying to change their exercise habits, 67 percent of people who lived in walkable neighborhoods achieved their goals, compared to just 30 percent of those who lived in pedestrian-unfriendly areas.
Healthy living doesn't happen at the doctor's office. The road to better health is paved with the small decisions we make every day. It's about the choices we make when we buy groceries, drive our cars and hang out with our kids. Join columnist Tara Parker-Pope as she sifts through medical research and expert opinions for practical advice to help readers take control of their health and live well every day. You can reach Ms. Parker-Pope at 
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I am so lucky to live in an area that is a pedestrian zone. And next to a huge park. And groceries. In the city.
Matter of fact, I think I will log out and go for a walk NOW.
— SusannaAnd yet, suburbia keeps spreading across our landscape like mold on a wedge of camembert.
It’s just another example of how our lifestyle choices have an overwhelming impact on our state of health.
We build our homes in car dependent neighborhoods.
We eat a diet designed to pack on the pounds.
We give over our tax dollars to subsidize the very foods that cause our obesity.
We choose bariatric surgery over vegetables and exercise.
We spend millions and millions of dollars on ‘miracle’ diet drugs and supplements.
And then we blame our genetics, or our jobs, or our income, or t.v., or the internet or….
Alright, enough ranting and raving
What do we do?
Well, you could move to the city and drop 10 lbs, but considering the housing market, maybe we should pass on that idea for a while.
In Finland, local governments started taking steps in the 70s to get their population eating and moving in healthier ways.
As a result, they have seen a 60 % decline in heart disease mortality since 1970.
And how did they do this?
One reason is that 55% of Finns engage in some form of moderate intensity exercise 3 days a week.
Why can’t we push our governments to implement the same type of changes that the Finns did?
http://healthhabits.wordpress.com/2008/07/30/im-fat-and-im-not-going-to-take-it-anymore/
C’mon people, if the Finns can do it, we sure as heck can.
And if you are interested in selling your suburban palace and moving into a big city condo, check out this site - http://walkscore.com/ - It ranks neighborhoods based upon their ‘walkability’
DR
— DRhttp://healthhabits.wordpress.com
Most of older urban America isn’t like Salt Lake City. In much of NYC, Chicago, Boston and LA a walk to the grocery store could mean for older folks getting mugged or worse.
— MARK KLEIN, M.D.What have I been saying ever since we moved here? Maine “the no sidewalks state”
— ChrisTalk about an irrelevant picture. Granted that house is old, but looks to be in the middle of nowhere. Getting anywhere from there almost certainly would require a car or horse. Come to think of it, it’s probably not even a house anymore, if it ever was. How about a city street of townhouses next time you want to represent old residential neighbourhoods?
— rlbIsn’t it possible that the causality is reversed here… that people who are already healthy prefer neighborhoods that are more supportive of their already-ingrained healthy habits? If obese people start flocking to ’50s-era neighborhoods they’re likely to still drive everywhere and not necessarily take up a pedestrian lifestyle. Does anything in the study address this problem?
— Fallacies are FunWe have an 100 yo house in a walkable neighborhood and we love it. We also joke that laundry is an all-day workout since our bedroom is on the third floor and the washer/dryer is in the basement. With 12 ft ceilings, that adds up to a lot of stairs. Even our cat are skinnier since we moved from a 1 story appt to a 3/4 story house.
Regarding safety, a have suburban relatives that constantly expressed “concern” — their arguments are based on misinformation, rumour and unacknowledged racism.
— TrishWho says you need to live in a large city to get those benefits?
Many historic districts in any state are built around basic services: post office, banks, schools, libraries, parks, eateries.
My home town of Bristol, RI has all that and much more. Home from work on Thursday, the car keys are dropped in a basket, and picked up again on Monday…..
— C DrawbridgeI don’t know what Mark Klein is smoking, but I can assure you that walking to the grocery store in Boston (or NYC, etc) is not a recipe for mugging. My downtown Boston neighborhood has several senior citizen housing complexes mixed in with the rest of our housing. You see people of all ages walking to and from grocery stores, wheeling metal carts made specifically for that purpose.
The ability to do errands on foot confers many benefits on both the individual and the community. These include better overall health from exercise integrated into everyday life. It provides independence for aging citizens, who can still lead vital lives when they can no longer drive safely. And there’s certainly a mental benefit to spending less time in a car, trapped in traffic.
Time for me to do some errands (on foot, naturally!)
— BostonianI wonder how building materials & construction might factor in. New houses use a variety of synthetic materials, some of which release harmful fumes (think: the insulation in FEMA trailers, or the smell of that new carpet, the adhesives in engineered wood products…). Add to this the tighter seals in windows and doors and the Tyvec housewrap, which keeps these fumes in. Living in an somewhat drafty old rowhouse (in a wonderfully walkable neighborhood), I have to deal with dustiness, with lead paint and maybe even some minor amounts of asbestos. I wonder how these factors balance out?
— Rob in PhillyMy home was built in 1913. It’s a small bungalow in one of the “outer boroughs” of New York City. The remarkable thing is, it was much smaller when it was built–only 14′ x 18′, one story, intended as a summer cottage. It was later expanded (the original house is now the living and dining rooms), including a small second story described as a “double dormer” in the building records, but still is less than 1,000 square feet in total.
A few years ago, the cranky old boiler died. It was older than I am, probably the original one that was put in when the house was expanded and converted to year-round living. The new one is much more energy efficient, which I appreciate as oil prices continue to climb. And, of course, there’s not all that much space to heat.
When I went house shopping, I brought along a map of the local bus routes that I’d marked up to show which areas were convenient to the bus I took to work, with flood-prone areas blacked out. Walked into a real estate office, showed the agent the map, told her how much money I had to spend, and said, “This is where I want to live.” Her jaw dropped.
I can walk to 13 bus routes and one commuter rail station. I can walk to the library, the supermarket, local shopping centers, my bank (and several other ATMs), several restaurants, a post office, and the coffee shop from whose wi-fi I am posting this message.
I can also walk to my Dad’s house, the same house my parents brought me home to when I was born 48 years ago. (It was built in the 1930s.) My parents never owned a car, and neither have I. Indeed, I’ve never learned to drive! (Think how much money that saves! Probably the entire sum of my IRA and 401k accounts is money I saved by not owning an automobile.)
When I was a child, I used to feel sorry for other kids whose parents owned cars, because they seemed to always depend on somebody to drive them where they wanted to go. When my brother and I wanted to play ball, we walked to the local park–or sometimes just played catch in the street. (It was a minor residential street with little traffic.) And on weekends, Dad was out in the street playing catch with us and the neighborhood kids, while their Dads were home washing the car.
http://geekette19.blogspot.com
— Karen#4 Chris,
What is walking in the gravel on the side of the road too good for you? I walk around my town in Maine all the time, to the post office, down the street to the river, even to the shop. We are a single car family and if I need something when the car is gone I walk!
— CarolinaIt should be noted that people able to afford to purchase an older home in a walkable neighborhood are, by virtue of their sociodemographic status, already likely to be in better physical health than those who could not afford to do so. It would be helpful to know if the study controlled for this potentially confounding factor during the statistical analysis.
— BeckyOh, boy! Another article about how fat people are made!
I can’t wait to read all the comments about how not to be fat. Because being thin is so easy and just a matter of willpower, good lifestyle choices and plain old common sense!! Just shop at Whole Foods and go cross country skiing in the winter and play tennis at the Club in the summer! If you’re too poor to do that, just do whatever they do in Europe! YAY! Fun!!!
— Kristin MacIn 2001 I moved from a Boca Raton FL development without sidewalks and a home built in 1992 to a Pittsburgh PA home built in 1941. I now walk 30mins each way to work and have lost (and kept off) 20lbs.
— JTMHa - I thought this post would talk about the toxicity level of new homes vs. old homes, and the effect of such on health.
— Jack at F&BFascinating, and so under commented on. Call for a redeisgn of our cities!
Oddly enough, the walk score site (link above in a comment) reflects very accurately how I feel about my last few apartments/houses. Even within the same area, the lower scoring places are the ones where I have been more depedant on a bike and buses rather than my own two feet.
Re: safety. And what about the rural areas where you can’t live in certain valleys because of the meth trade (evidenced by the remarkably high murder rates, domestic violence, and theft)? There are bad urban bits, but common sense please. Human nature is a constant.
— marieI live in an beautiful 1930’s neighborhood. With narrow, slightly winding streets and no sidewalks.
The narrow streets, and the lack of sidewalks, force drivers to slow down and pay attention. It is impossible to speed, so it safe to talk to neighbors while standing in the street. The anonymity between driver and pedestrian is gone, both will see each other and have time to react.
As a result, people walk down my residential street all day long, enjoying the large trees and beautiful, varied architecture. On a main street near by, with sidewalks but where cars speed by, there is a fraction of the foot traffic I see in front of my home.
Maybe that’s a partial solution. By narrowing suburban streets and slowing cars down, walking for exercise would would be encouraged.
— JenIt’s not just the ability of people to walk somewhere, it’s their attitude towards walking. Growing up in a suburban area, we lived 2 blocks from a grocery store and 1 block from my high school. We still drove everywhere. Now I’m an urbanite. I was home for a holiday recently and we realized we needed some additional supplies (small stuff…ketchup, BBQ sauce, paper plates). I volunteered to go get them, and began to leave without my car keys. You would have thought I sprouted a second head! Until we change this attitude, planned communities will get us nowhere.
— Mrs. DThis Old House might actually be good if it is in the right neightborhood.
— Robert L SmithOld houses can also be healthier (though not always so) because of the materials used in their construction. Materials that don’t require synthetic glue because they are whole planks of wood rather than plywood and compressed composites etc. Also they tend to have better open window to open window natural air flow.
— EstebanI could go on…………
I agree with Fallacies on this. We live in a walkable area of older homes and the folks that stay in there cars do just that. I see more evidence that education and good parenting create healthy habits. We need to move away from the view that sees exercise and healthy eating as not unpleasant duties but the keys to feeling great!
— MojowrknExcellent article!
I grew up in west Texas, in a beautiful old house that was built in 1919. My elderly parents are still there, nearly 50 years later. It was my mother’s dream house – really! As a little girl in the 1930s she used to ride by it on the way back from picnicking with her family at the nearby park, or after viewing holiday decorations in the “rich” neighborhoods. She vowed that she would live there when she grew up.
And there she is to this very day. I believe that living in her dream home has been her greatest health benefit. She refuses to sell and move to a smaller place, and insists we will have to carry her out on a stretcher…someday.
The streets in that neighborhood are narrower than those in modern suburbs, but they give way to large front yards and wide sidewalks. As kids we were able to walk or ride our bikes to the park, and the only traffic danger came from the occasional teenager in his new muscle car, or the fur-wearing widow Jones in her boat-sized Cadillac, who came veering out of the alleyway a la Cruella Deville (she hated kids.) Note that she came from the alleyway, because garages in that area were built behind the houses.
Unlike today’s suburbs, where HOAs run the show and where you have to reside in the community to enjoy the amenities, the park in my childhood neighborhood was and still is a public park, where for a small fee anyone can swim in the pool, or play tennis at the courts. I think many of today’s planned communities do a good job of trying to emulate neighborhoods of the past, and the trend of building smaller versions of supermarkets and other retail within walking distance is bringing that “old neighborhood” feel back to the modern lifestyle.
— JudyMark Klein:
Salt Lake City is no better or worse then most American cities. Actually, most of NYC, Chicago, Boston, and Philadelphia are quite safe and walkable - for both the old and young.
In the mean time, the article wasn’t about Salt Lake - the researchers were actually much more thorough then you give them credit for. I would expect that someone who throws around their medical credentials would understand the research process (Klein M.D….), however we should remind you that medical doctors are not educated in urban planning, sociology, or demographics. The inability to recognize this lack of knowledge certainly is damaging to some parts of the profession.
- Jeff (Ph.D, Ph.D, M.A., M.M…. yes, I can advertise my extensive
— Jeffcredentials to strangers as well as you can “Dr.” Klein)
I live in the downtown area of a medium College town, I’m 4 minutes from work via Bicycle, I’m right by a pharmacy, several very nice( expensive) sit down restaurants, groceries are a 20 minute bike ride, so is the laundrette. I am very active and trying to maintain an healthy lifestyle. I live in the older part of the city which was once reserved for the Old Time Wealthy Big Wigs, but has fallen out of favour in the last thirty years, and looks a bit run down.
My house is a simple “shotgun” or “shoe box” house ( All one level no doors only doorways, You can see the back door from the front door in a straight line) it is older, not as old as some around here, but yes lots of sidewalks and places to walk/ride to.
However, I think this study needs to come to my neighborhood! Many people here who do live in this neighborhood are residing in the homes that are old and falling to pieces( lots of fires and meth houses around here)and they do walk, but they aren’t very healthy, most are welfare folks who buy their food at The Dollar General store and the fast food joints or gas stations nearby. Many are overweight, on disability and can’t travel very far, so they are limited by what they buy and can afford, thus is why the Dollar store is almost always packed. Then on the other side of the spectrum are the Meth Addicts here that are super-skinny, frail and turning this place upside down with high crime and violence(Thus I don’t leave my house after dark most of the time, unless I have too), they only go to the same places too, small little places with no fresh fruit and veggies available.
Old residential neighborhoods can be a beneficial towards one’s health but I think only depending where you live!
Hello from Scarytown USA
— Living in the Old downtown