http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/02/060228085228.htm

Source: Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health

Posted: February 28, 2006
Can Urban Design Make You Fat? Researchers Studying Link Between Obesity
And The Urban Environment

Researchers at the Mailman School of Public Health are studying the link
between the urban environment and how it might contribute to the cause
or origins of obesity. In a study that will have wide-reaching
applications, the Mailman School is one of 14 groups across the United
States to receive funding from the National Institute of Environmental
Health Sciences (NIEHS) to study the association between body size and
the built environment.

Up until now, obesity research has focused on ways to change individual
behavior but with obesity rates continuing to climb, researchers are now
turning their efforts to the built environment and the interventions
that might be effective in fighting the epidemic. Working with various
city departments, Andrew Rundle, DrPH, assistant professor in the
Department of Epidemiology at the Mailman School, and his research team,
are gathering data on neighborhood features such as land use, density of
bus and subway stops, availability of nutritious food, the location and
quality of parks and recreation facilities -- even the number of trees
on a street and the number of buildings with elevators -- that affect a
person's diet and activity levels. Upon completion of the research, Dr.
Rundle expects to have a large base of evidence linking the built
environment to body size.

In some preliminary results, Dr. Rundle found that people who live in
neighborhoods that have a mixture of residential and commercial uses
have lower levels of obesity than people who live in neighborhoods that
are closer to being 100 percent residential. "The more mixed an area,
the skinnier people are," according to Dr. Rundle. "Mixing supports
walking, it supports incidental activity and it makes you independent of
an automobile." The data also indicates that as the density of bus and
subway stops increases in a neighborhood, the body size of residents
goes down. Again, it is thought that public transit allows residents to
be private automobile independent and promotes walking.

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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/09/050909220354.htm

Source: Oregon State University

Posted: September 10, 2005
Study Links Obesity, Urban Sprawl

CORVALLIS - Is suburban life making people overweight? Or could it be
that overweight people tend to choose the suburban life?

In a study recently published in the Journal of Regional Science,
researchers from Oregon State University found that the relationship
between obesity and urban sprawl may be a two-way street.

Economists Andrew Plantinga from OSU's Department of Agricultural and
Resource Economics and Stephanie Bernell from OSU's Department of Public
Health expanded previous studies that showed that people living in areas
of urban sprawl tend to have higher body mass indices. Their analysis
suggests that the relationship between obesity and urban sprawl may be
due to personal preferences when choosing a home location rather than to
direct impacts of the suburban environment on physical activity and weight.
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