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Science

Countrywide Natural Experiment Links Built Environment To Physical Activity (nature.com) 72

Posted by msmash from the step-in-the-right-direction dept.
A countrywide study of smartphone users who relocated between US cities found that moving to more walkable environments increased daily walking by 1,100 steps on average. Stanford University researchers analyzed 248,266 days of step data from 5,424 users of the Azumio Argus smartphone app who relocated 7,447 times among 1,609 cities between March 2013 and February 2016. Participants who moved from cities at the 25th percentile of walkability to those at the 75th percentile sustained the increased activity levels for at least three months after relocation.

The additional steps consisted predominantly of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, with large walkability increases of 49-80 points associated with about one hour per week more of such activity. The study found that 42.5% of participants met national physical activity guidelines for moderate-to-vigorous activity after moving to highly walkable locations, compared to 21.5% before relocation. Computer simulations based on the data suggest that increasing all US cities to the walkability level of Chicago or Philadelphia could result in 36 million more Americans meeting aerobic physical activity guidelines.

Countrywide Natural Experiment Links Built Environment To Physical Activity More | Reply

Countrywide Natural Experiment Links Built Environment To Physical Activity

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  • Not surprised (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Registered Coward v2 ( 447531 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2025 @02:16PM (#65587852)
    Making it more practical to walk and more people will walk. I spend time in a major European city and mostly walk unless it is a long distance say 2 or more kilometers or later at night.

    • I have it on good authority from Americans that peak civilisation and life enjoyment is being stuck in traffic sitting in a oversized tank representing an undersized penis because walking and taking public transport is for poor people.

      • Americans don't WALK across their cities because

        You know why.

        You know exactly why.

        The entire urban landscape of the USA can be explained by a very very very simple thing. It started on Dec. 18th, 1865 or much earlier, when they all were brought to the US in the first place.

        Everything and everyone wants to get away from them, paying any price they can or driving as far as they need to.

  • Was tracking people based on how often they go to church versus how often they say they go to church. You can imagine how that study went.

    But we can't have walkable cities because then the government can control absolutely everywhere you go.

    Now please pay absolutely no attention to all those self-driving cars or the fact that the government builds all your roads because the car companies sure as hell on going to pay for that...

  • moving to more walkable environments increased daily walking

    Wow! How did they just find out? Crazy bastards these scientists, nowadays!

  • I currently live in an 800 yo village and walk about 3 km per day. It is just not worth starting the car to go to the shop.

    • Re: Village life (Score:4, Informative)

      by felixrising ( 1135205 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2025 @03:54PM (#65588134)
      Anecdotally, I make sure I live near work and our kids school. We drive at most once per week, sometimes just fortnightly. We live 5km from the CBD of Brisbane Australia. We walk everywhere. Typical step count is 6500/day and I work from home full time. My wife walks to and from work most days. I find the idea of working to pay for transport to get to work very counterproductive. The idea anyone also then pays for gym membership and then just does basic exercises like walking on a treadmill also illogical. But lots of people do that kind of shit like it's perfectly normal.

    • I live in a city with a population of 1million people and agree with you. The size doesn't make the difference. Urban planning does. It's not worth starting the car for most anything, even when raining or snowing. Typically it's cheaper and faster to get to a destination in a well designed city by foot, bicycle, or public transport.

      I start the car when I have to haul something heavy ... that I can't get delivered.

      Now things change when I travel to other cities. ... No wait it doesn't either because taking a

    • I live in a 1914 suburb of a 2000 year old city of 15 million. And... same.

      I own no car. Walking, biking, scooting, bus, train and metro does the job for me for almost everything.

  • Is Bataan Peninsula considered to be walkable?

  • Let people make their own decisions. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Magnificat ( 1920274 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2025 @04:01PM (#65588150)
    I don't WANT to live anywhere close enough to businesses to be able to walk to them. Give me rural or suburban. If any businesses are within a mile, that is way too close. And shopping on foot is totally impractical anyway if you buy any quantity of items -- or heavy items like cat litter or large bags of cat or dog food. I typically go to the grocery store for major shopping every couple of weeks -- and fill the entire back of an SUV, so that isn't happening on foot. Same for work, my typical daily driving is 15-25 miles depending on the day. Let people vote for where they want to live with their dollars and personal choices -- no tax dollars should be used to further walkability goals or any other society planning.

    • You have the right to make your own decisions. However, you are the people trying to force others to live far away, no one is trying to force you to live close. Every day a-holes in major cities try to prevent people from living dense. They pass rules saying no duplex's, no sky scrapers, etc.

      No one is going around telling people that live in small towns or farms that they cannot build single family housing.

      Note, the people in NYC can easily have those things delivered once a week. We can do that for le

      • >We are fine supporting your ridiculous life styles
        What do you mean by that? :) There's nothing really ridiculous about not wanting to be surrounded by noise, traffic and hordes of people, is there? IMO the suburban lifestyle is the ridiculous one. Almost all the downsides of living in a densely populated area, with none of the upsides; and none of the upsides of actually being 'rural', but all of the downsides (more driving, primarily)

        I can say though, living about 30 miles outside the nearest 'city'

      • Cities generate higher property tax revenue, as the supply/demand relationship makes urban property more valuable. But you generally pay property taxes to the municipal or county government, so that doesn't leave the city. They generate more sales and/or income tax revenue to the State, but that's because those are generated by individuals, and cities have more of those. If everyone abandoned a city for the surrounding suburban or rural areas, the amount of tax revenue going to the State and Federal gove

    • Let people vote for where they want to live with their dollars and personal choices -- no tax dollars should be used to further walkability goals or any other society planning.

      Let's for a moment forget all the stupidity you wrote before that last sentence and focus in "their dollars and personal choices - no tax dollars". Exactly what dollars you think are being used to pave the roads you use daily or build infrastructure like electricity, water, communications and every other public service to the rural/suburban area you chose to live as your personal choice? You, sir, a an absolutely idiot.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by shilly ( 142940 )

        You just know that he will flat out refuse to accept that rural and suburban environments in the US have been explicitly planned to be suitable for fast driving and dangerous for cars and mainly as a result of firefighter departments having shitty incentives and ridiculous macho egos that encourage them to buy larger trucks than they actually need, all of which is driven by the appalling nature of the US healthcare system, which makes it extremely profitable to run a crappy ambulance service. The intractabl

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Ogive17 ( 691899 )
      So tax dollars should not be used to further walkability goals but we should continue spending tax dollars building out infrastructure to very sparsely populated areas of the country? I'd rather maintain sidewalks and bike lanes than endless roads.. probably easier on the ole budget as well.

      I'm from the mid-west so I have a lifetime of experience with the ignorance that comes with suburban living. If people in rural/suburban areas had to pay full amount for all the public amenities they receive, it wou

    • I don't WANT to live anywhere close enough to businesses to be able to walk to them. Give me rural or suburban. If any businesses are within a mile, that is way too close. And shopping on foot is totally impractical anyway if you buy any quantity of items -- or heavy items like cat litter or large bags of cat or dog food. I typically go to the grocery store for major shopping every couple of weeks -- and fill the entire back of an SUV, so that isn't happening on foot. Same for work, my typical daily driving is 15-25 miles depending on the day.

      Let people vote for where they want to live with their dollars and personal choices -- no tax dollars should be used to further walkability goals or any other society planning.

      As Magnificat says, it is true that in a place built for cars, you do tend to need a large car to drive all the way to the supermarket, "stock up", and then "haul" the goods back home. And it's also true that you probably don't want to live close to those sort of sprawling, noisy businesses.

      In a walkable environment all sorts of things change. People shop just for the evening meal. They pop in to the grocer's on their way home - it doesn't have to be a special trip. Items are sold in smaller quantities - Yo

      • Shopping for food daily and not keeping enough on hand for at least a week or two is a serious waste of time and also is quite frankly a dangerous situation to be in. There is no way I would ever not have at least a few weeks worth of canned goods, rice, beans, and bottled water on hand. Additionally, buying in small quantities is almost always more expensive. And buying at a small local store in a city makes it harder to get good, locally grown organic produce, fresh eggs, and meats. Most farmers markets t

        • Shopping for food daily and not keeping enough on hand for at least a week or two is a serious waste of time and also is quite frankly a dangerous situation to be in. There is no way I would ever not have at least a few weeks worth of canned goods, rice, beans, and bottled water on hand. Additionally, buying in small quantities is almost always more expensive. And buying at a small local store in a city makes it harder to get good, locally grown organic produce, fresh eggs, and meats. Most farmers markets tend to be located outside the actual city and closer to the actual farms where stuff is grown.

          Good points. I do agree that it is good to have a few week's stock of non-perishable food for emergencies. And yes, as a rule of thumb, buying in bulk is cheaper.

          However buying small quantities doesn't have to mean not buying locally. It's not always like that where I live. In fact one of my local (small) supermarkets has the name and location of the famer advertised with the vegetables. And buying vegetables regulaly means you are eating fresh produce. I don't want to portray my environment as some sort of

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by shilly ( 142940 )

          If you are eating perishable fruits and vegetables you bought two weeks ago, you are not eating organic, and you have lost large amounts of the nutritional value of what you have.

          I live in North London (UK). I have both large supermarkets and small grocers within an eight minute walk of my house selling a huge range of fresh produce (examples: pistachios, cashews, walnuts and organic honey including the comb from Turkey; Kentish cobnuts; garlic shoots; sorrel when in season; dozens of varieties of tahini; i

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by jabuzz ( 182671 )

            Tell that to the people living in the highlands and islands when the Co-op got hit earlier in the year. The nearest other supermarket is 100 miles away, and all of a sudden, it's no longer funny. I was in one a month after the attack, and the place was stripped. The only frozen goods were some ice cream and ice cubes. The only breakfast cereal was high-end muesli. Hell even the alcohol shelves were almost empty.

            Now imagine that instead of M&S and the Co-op, it had been Tesco and Sainsbury's, now ~45% of

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by shilly ( 142940 )

              First off, I think it’s a bit different if you live in a remote area like the Highlands and Islands, where the chance of something happening that requires you to be self-sufficient is much higher than in London.

              Secondly, I remember the Covid shortages of bog paper etc very well, and you know what? My local corner shop had no supply shortages the entire way through, including all those delicious items I mentioned before. Some of the big supermarkets struggled with some perishable goods for a while, but

        • You can make your own choices. What you can't do is have your own reality. So I'll be taking the piss a bit.

          Refusing to believe in the existence of alternatives or refusing to hear how the alternatives work doesn't make you correct.

          Shopping for food daily and not keeping enough on hand for at least a week or two is a serious waste of time

          Firstly, don't you have grocery delivery where you live? If not that's pretty weird.

          Secondly, I've done it both ways and you are mistaken. I have a small supermarket a few

    • People claim that right until they actually do live that close to businesses to walk to. Sorry to gaslight you, but I thought like you before I moved to a walkable city and boy were my eyes opened to how much better life is.

      By the way I live in suburbs. Walkable doesn't mean giving up rural. There's a lot of grey space between inner city skyscrapers and a suburb with zero percent commercial zoning and zero public transport. I live in a house. I don't see or hear anything commercial, yet I can still walk to

  • Being generous and assuming a stride length of 2.5 feet means you are walking another 440 feet per day. That's not a lot.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by drnb ( 2434720 )

      Being generous and assuming a stride length of 2.5 feet means you are walking another 440 feet per day. That's not a lot.

      On "couch potato" days my watch logs 4,000 step.

    • Came here to make this point.
      As someone who tracks his steps, an extra 1000 steps is nothing. If a change in environment boosted my step count by say 3000-4000 then I would start listening.
      BR>With a family to look after I can do 1000 steps on my stairs at home in 1 day alone and I don't even count that towards exercise.
    • Geez, I think I do that just walking my dogs around the yard. Maybe we should move everyone out of the cities and give them dogs. The majority would be happier for it, as living in cities increases stress and decreases happiness, while dogs decrease stress and increase happiness. People with dogs also live longer.

      Suck on that city planners! Don't spend money on sidewalks, spend it on moving trucks and dog food.

    • "Stride length is the distance covered when taking two steps, one with each foot. It's the distance between the point where one foot strikes the ground and the next time that same foot strikes the ground."

      2.5 feet per stride? Do you shop for clothes in the toddler section? Even then, wouldn't it be 550 feet per day?

  • Steps are NOT a way to quantify healthy exercise. Everyone wants to see improvement in their health, so they want to see more steps on their devices. Except those steps are now shorter, lighter, less up and down, you know, pretending that 3 steps on level ground are better than 2 steps going up stairs. Hey, take the escalater up to rest and then walk around the office once. MORE STEPS! There is so much that technology does NOT measure. One of those is health. How about: walk a little more than last w

  • I get over 10,000 steps per day just going for walks. Walking around our neighborhood. No high density necessary.

    No need to herd me into a dense city with public policy. You self-styled "anti-fascists" sure like force ...

    • No one's trying to herd you into a city. You sound completely insufferable and would much rather you're shut away in the distant 'burbs where you're less of a bother.

      • If we assume that the distribution of insufferable people is consistent and independent of other variables, then you will be most likely to encounter them in cities. It is also where they will be hardest to avoid. Large numbers and all that.

        But, if insufferability is the product of something else, like repeated negative interactions with others, then we could assume the per-capita rate would be higher in cities where the population density makes such interactions far more common. Ditto if it is caused

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