[sidewndr46]

I've seen studies like this before. They'll suggest that as little as 15 minutes of exercise significantly improves health in some group they studied. My initial assumption was they added 15 minutes of additional exercise. No, they studied people who did literally nothing. Then had them exercise 15 minutes a day.

As you might guess, their outcomes improved greatly.

[SchemaLoad]

This is sadly not a rare type of person. I'm worried my parents fit this description, they drive everywhere and work an office job. I'd guess on average they get 0 minutes of exercise a day.

I think people get this image in their head that someone who doesn't exercise ever is this comically fat unemployed person when in reality it's the average office worker who isn't fitness minded. A good chunk of HN users wouldn't be getting 15 minutes of exercise a day.

[jraby3]

Looking at a few friend's health app on their iPhone it's amazing to me to see people who walk less than 2,000 steps a day and don't go to the gym. It's shockingly normal in some places though.

[xboxnolifes]

The amount of time in the exercise advice keep getting shorter and shorter. The common advice when I was younger, in the USA, was an hour of exercise. Couldn't get enough people to do it. Then it was 30 minutes. Still couldn't get people to do it. Now the advice has been 15 minutes a day for a while, and we'll still not be able to get people to do it.

The environment and culture needs to be structured such that people get the exercise they need "naturally". The vast majority aren't going to go out of their way for it.

[Schiendelman]

That's a big part of why zoning is so dangerous. In most of the western world (Europe too on average), we pushed down population density so much that your typical destinations are much less likely to be within walking distance, so you don't walk.

[nine_k]

Indeed. In NYC I do 98% of my shopping by walking. I can reach my doctor by walking. My daughter used to walk to school because it was a 10 minutes walk (and an excellent school).

That would be impossible in a suburban setting; at best, one of these destinations would be within the theoretical waking distance, but without the walkways.

[acuozzo]

> That would be impossible in a suburban setting;

Not necessarily true. The "village center" idea Jim Rouse used in his design of Columbia, MD could be used to solve the problem.

All of these things are within walking distance if you live in Columbia's village of Wilde Lake (and, of course, your health insurance covers the primary care physicians in walking distance).

I'm guessing you're thinking of typical "stroad" suburbs, but alternatives are possible and do exist.

Unfortunately, the suburb has to be the product of planning like Columbia. Typical "emergent" suburbs turn into unwalkable ones.

[Schiendelman]

The fact that alternative designs are possible is almost irrelevant, because the problem is that you don't get people to agree on the same things. You get one example of something like that and it never replicates.

If you want public health outcomes, actual scale, you get much better outcomes by not having that regulatory system at all.

[Schiendelman]

Absolutely. There's a reason body fat percentage in New York City is so much lower than anywhere else in the US!

[Gigachad]

This is something I've visually observed all over Australia. The walkable areas are noticeably fitter. I don't think all of those people just happen to care about fitness more, they just spend more time moving to get between places rather than sitting all day.

[Schiendelman]

Absolutely! Fitness scales super closely with localized population density.

[camdenreslink]

Really depends on the suburb. Where I live in NYS (a suburb of Buffalo) all of those things are within walking distance if you live within the village limits.

[Schiendelman]

It's interesting - whether examples of potential destination categories are within walking distance doesn't move the needle on health (physical or mental) outcomes, compared to absolute residential density moving the needle tens of percent.

[Herring]

Yeah pretty much the only way to scale exercise to entire populations and over entire lifetimes is to design it directly into the cities.

[Schiendelman]

The crazy part is you don't even have to DESIGN it, the market is desperate to build walkable density because it's so much more profitable than anything else. You just have to LET landowners build upward.

[Herring]

But then you'll run into traffic/parking issues unless you have a good public transit and land use policy (e.g. bikes, trams, mixed use development, etc). That requires such good design skills few cities have mastered it (Tokyo, Copenhagen, Singapore).

[Schiendelman]

I know it seems this way, but all you have to do is not subsidize driving with government provided parking, and not build highways, and there's no traffic problem, because people don't get cars in the first place - they don't have anywhere to put them and there's no highway to punch through dense neighborhoods. Transit and bike infrastructure can always be built after the fact through public demand. When you let go, the people who WANT to live in high density without cars FLOCK to what gets built.

In fact, if you really stop zoning, there's a decent chance companies will ASK to operate transit for you, because those population densities and no free car competition can make it profitable. This happens in many cities!

Mixed use development happens if you let it happen. Banks and developers like money, and mixed use makes way more money, so they want to build it. Sometimes they fuck up and don't, and those land owners pay the price and retrofit. And that's fine. Again, just let them.

In high engagement Western societies, where people get involved in politics and urban planning, "design" universally leads to car subsidies and shitty outcomes. The market does a way better job.

[Gigachad]

It really doesn't take that much at all. You just have to allow apartments and mixed use zoning, and not actively chop up the land with stroads.

Human populations naturally gravitate towards walking, and it's pretty much active sabotage of the outside environment that has broken this.

[wodenokoto]

HN is always so sarcastic on this point, but a large part of the population is not getting 15-30 minutes of actual exercise a day.

[free652]

15 mins of walking or exercise. I did 2 hours of walking 15k steps and it's barely moved my required cardio load to 10 and I need over 200 weekly.