IN Toronto magazine
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Source image: Suzanne Tucker
Larry Penn and Bart Desiron learned that their suburban dream wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. A stint in the boonies made them long for the healthier lifestyle they had enjoyed in downtown Toronto.
The couple met online in 2000 and married in 2004. Being from Belgium, Desiron lobbied hard to begin their married lives in Europe. So after the nuptials, they decided to sell Penn’s home in Riverdale and move to a suburban community outside of Brussels. “Living in a small town was interesting at first,” says Penn, “but the day-to-day reality of getting into the car for everything, like going to get milk or many other essentials, really started to be a problem.” After three years, they decided to move back to Toronto and purchased a house in Riverside.
Penn’s new job means he can TTC to work and catch up on the books he never got to read when he was behind the wheel. The couple has a new addition to the family, Sookie, a lab cross who gets regular walks through the neighbourhood and in the park across the street. There are great restaurants close by. Most nights the car stays home.
“When my family is here for a visit they can’t believe the change in our lifestyle,” says Desiron. “Starting my career as a sous chef I quickly realized the difference in the North American diet which is better balanced than the deep-fried Belgium one. Living in Toronto for seven years has really opened me up to living healthier.”
Choosing the right lifestyle is getting more urgent. Statistics from around the world and at home are shocking: 60 percent of men and 50 percent of women in the UK will be clinically obese by 2050 (The Lancet); 79 percent of US adults will be overweight or obese by 2030 (European Journal of Clinical Nutrition); up to 5.2 million Canadians are presently obese, costing up to $ 7.1 billion each year in health care expenses (Canadian Institute of Health Information). Obesity is a monumental problem exploding before our eyes.
Why are so many people morbidly overweight? The old excuses of genetic predisposition or hormone imbalance in no way explain the legions of the obese that have cropped up in the last few decades. More and more research, including a recent report out from Toronto Public Health called The Walkable City, points to a fascinating correlation between weight gain and where you live. The suburbs, it seems, make you fat.
Gay men and lesbians are now staking claim to all parts of the GTA. It’s no longer just a matter of moving beyond the Church-Wellesley Village to other central neighbourhoods like Leslieville or High Park, gay men and lesbians are purchasing homes from Mississauga to Durham County. At a time when many LGBT folk are buying into the suburban dream of big houses, lush lawns and plenty of open space, the dream is being exposed as an unhealthy, unsustainable lifestyle.
Comedy writer Jennifer Whalen, who has a new show in development, spent seven years in Mississauga before moving to Bathurst and St Clair in the mid-’90s. The difference in body sizes from suburbs to city core struck her immediately. “I remember thinking, ‘Who are all these skinny people rushing around with such determination?’ In Mississauga you had to drive to do everything, even the convenience store. It’s super scary.”
The Walkable City report zeroed in on what’s called utilitarian walking, the walking we do every day as we go about getting the stuff done we have to get done: going to work, taking kids to school, buying food, heading out to socialize or to attend cultural events.
The report surveyed 1,525 residents across the GTA and compared them to a neighbourhood index of walkability. The walkabilty of each neighbourhood (for each postal code, in fact) was based on various factors like the density and variety of housing, the number of nearby shops and services and the concentration of street intersections (fine grids versus long blocks or cul-de-sacs).
The most striking observation from the report is that Torontonians, no matter where they live, prefer walkable neighbourhoods. It’s in our DNA. “I was surprised at how strong the preference was for more walkable neighbourhoods across the GTA,” says Monica Campbell, director of Healthy Public Policy at Toronto Public Health, and one of the report’s principal authors. “Yes, it’s much more in the city of Toronto but it’s strong in other parts of the GTA, too. For every person in the city of Toronto that strongly prefers to live in an auto-oriented neighbourhood, 12 people strongly prefer a more walkable one.
“It’s a nice alignment: That people seem to want what’s healthy for them.”
Marilyn Maxim’s story bears that out. For her first few years living in downtown Toronto in the ’80s, Maxim didn’t own a car — she couldn’t afford one. After years working in the world of high-end office furniture, she finally purchased a sexy Mini Cooper and a fab condo in Don Mills. Now that she has wheels though, she has become hyper-sensitive about her weight and claims that driving, while convenient, has resulted in a general lethargy that she is having a difficult time coming to terms with. “It is a 20-minute walk to the bus stop and then 15 minutes from the subway to work. If I were to take transit, that is over an hour of walking per day, five days a week. I know I’d be in much better shape, mentally and physically. But driving is faster, so I take the easy way out. And beat myself up about it all the time.”
It may seem obvious to state that people walk more in more walkable neighbourhoods, but the behavioural findings of The Walkable City report are remarkable. “If you compare the people who prefer and live in the most walkable neighbourhoods to people who prefer and live in the least walkable neighbourhoods,” says Campbell, “the first group walks for utilitarian purposes nearly three times as much, they use transit nearly three times as much, they use vehicles around four times less and travelled six times less far. These are huge differences.”
Surprisingly, the report also shows it doesn’t matter what your preferences are. Even if you prefer getting into your hot-rod and bombing around town, if you live in a more walkable neighbourhood, you inevitably walk more. How we design neighbourhoods matter. And the impact on our overall health is huge.
The Walkable City found that 25 percent of residents in the outer GTA were found to be obese compared to 18 percent in Toronto. On average there was a difference of between six or seven pounds per person. Losing seven pounds is hard enough, but think how big that number becomes when you are looking at averages.
“We can’t say there is a causal relationship,” says Campbell, noting other possible factors like access to fresh food or other predispositions for being overweight, “but it’s a consistent trend, it’s not accidental.”
The findings confirm numerous other reports on the correlation between the frequency of car trips and the size of one’s middle area. The Ontario College of Family Physicians’ report titled Health Impacts of Urban Sprawl states, “Obesity, and its related health problems, is one particularly harmful effect of sprawling car dependent communities.”
And it’s not just about weight. Our sedentary existence is a big part of the increased rate of diabetes and heart disease in North America. Those with enough financial resources can choose to make where they live part of a healthy lifestyle but many others are denied the luxury of choice.
The 2007 Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences Atlas clearly shows much higher rates of diabetes in the areas surrounding the downtown core, what’s known as the inner suburbs. Places like Etobicoke, North York and Scarborough were the first car-focused neighbourhoods to be built in the GTA after World War II and show up as the least walkable neighbourhoods in The Walkable City report.
The ICES Atlas also looks at many other factors such as socio-economic status and proximity to healthy/unhealthy foods. It is no coincidence that these inner suburbs are among the poorest neighbourhoods in the city and have less access to grocery stores carrying the unprocessed grains, fruits and vegetables that deter the onset of diabetes and insulin resistance. Instead, many of these residents rely on convenience stores full of fatty sugary treats that pack on the pounds and play havoc with their insulin levels over time.
The Walkable City report notes that the health benefits of living in a walkable neighbourhood are often denied to the low-income households who need them the most. Better planning is a matter of equity. Well-designed neighbourhoods, healthy neighbourhoods, should be available to all.
With files by Gordon Bowness
THE WALKABLE CITY View the report online at toronto.ca/health/hphe/pdf/walkable_city.pdf
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