Old Neighborhoods or New: Which One's Are Healthy?
At one point in time, older neighborhoods, particularly urban centers, would not have been considered healthy. In the 1800s they were quite the opposite with squalid conditions leading to a rise in disease and death. By packing several families into one dimly lit, often damp apartment, public health was bound to decline. Row after row of tenement housing created slums plagued by infectious diseases. The state of public health was so bad that a 13 year period from 1793 to 1806 was termed the yellow fever era. On top of disease that spread amongst unsanitary living conditions was the lack of separation between housing and polluting industries. Unregulated factories belched noxious fumes next to peoples homes. Most companies were dumping chemicals and garbage into the very lakes and rivers that served as the city water supply.
While this paints a grim picture of densely settled communities, we have come a long way from the era of laissez-faire city planning. Today, communities regulate the number of people that can live in one dwelling unit and separate heavy industrial uses from residential. Health departments regulate the operation of our drinking and waste water systems. National agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency make sure industries are not polluting the water sources we rely on to survive. Despite the 20th century advances in governing that served to protect and keep residents healthy, the post WWII era led to the largest silent health threat yet, the creation of suburbia.
Common advertisements in the 1950s for suburban homes
After the war ended a massive housing crisis emerged. With all production and materials reserved for the war effort, new home construction nearly stopped until after the war, leaving the nearly 3 million soldiers that returned without a place to live. To quickly solve the issue we created unique solutions such as accessory dwelling units (a small, usually detached housing unit, above a garage or in the rear yard) and many people offered up their extra bedrooms. But the permanent solution was achieved through the GI Bill and the Federal Housing Administration. Along with many other federal programs, these funding tools helped millions of families purchase their first home. Nearly all of these homes were in new suburban developments (because they were given preference through the FHA) that fit the “American Dream” narrative developed to encourage more people to purchase a home in one of these new neighborhoods. There were also racial motivations behind the new enclaves which were reserved through restrictive covenants for white families only, another way to racially segregate communities.
So why were (and are) these new suburban neighborhoods that offered first time homebuyers an opportunity to live further from the city on a large lot with more room, fresh air, and a modern home so unhealthy? Because they are part of a larger pattern of development called sprawl. Not all suburban neighborhoods are sprawling as many were built on trolley lines and some have even been annexed into larger cities. But most of the new suburbs can only be reached by car and were designed to be residential enclaves lacking in basic amenities such as a corner store, drug store, or other personal services nearby. Every use was separated according to Euclidian zoning practices so a car was required to get around even within these suburbs.
Our post WWII home in Lubbock, Texas with poor sidewalk connections to the closest commercial area leading to almost non-existent pedestrian activity even when the weather was nice
Increased driving resulting from sprawl leads to higher emission levels causing increased mortality and higher risk of respiratory disease, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. Not to mention it contributes to climate change which has its own host of health issues a result. While cleaner vehicles such as electric vehicles will help reduce emissions, a greater impact can be achieved by redesigning our suburbs. Many suburban communities such as La Vista, Nebraska are working towards this end. They have seen the negative side of a community designed only to house people and move cars and are now supporting redevelopment projects like the City Center Mixed Use Project that mix uses placing housing, restaurants, shops, and entertainment together. They are changing their land use to support more opportunities for residents to walk to their destinations instead of drive.
This is important because while most people think of physical activity as recreational (running, playing sports, going to a fitness class), that is only half the equation. The other side of physical activity is utilitarian, the exercise we get by walking to the store or work. While a lot of our decisions on whether to walk or bike are driven by motivation, much of it can be further influenced by the design of our communities. For example, many suburban strip centers have two big box stores anchoring each end with a few shops in between. Almost no one will walk from one end of the center to the other if they need to shop at both big box stores. They are going to get in their car and drive across the parking lot. On the flip side, almost no one would get in their car in an urban commercial district to go the same distance. This is because the shopping center buildings are designed without windows resulting in large blank walls, have narrow sidewalks, and are bordered by a sea of concrete parking stalls, while the urban district has a new storefront to look at every 30 or 40 feet with covered awnings providing protection from the elements, narrow streets, and usually other pedestrians walking along the district. I’m far more motivated to walk 1,500 feet (about four urban blocks) to a few shops in a commercial district than I am to make that same trek across the stark parking lot of a suburban shopping center.
A coffee shop and a restaurant with the best fish and chips nestled into a neighborhood in Northeast Minneapolis, an easy walk for many residents
The suburban neighborhood is nearly always designed without considering a pedestrian or bicyclist. This is changing in many cities which have strict requirements for sidewalks and some even bike facilities, but in many areas it has not. Suburban neighborhoods when designed with sidewalks are not the most direct route to a major destinations because many are plagued with winding streets that double the distance. If they do connect to shops, they are often located several miles from most of the residential uses, discouraging residents from walking at all. Older neighborhoods are the opposite. They were designed in a compact manner with more mixed uses that make destinations easily accessible on foot or by bike because vehicles were not the primary form of transportation at the time they were built. Their design encourages residents to make more utilitarian trips in an active manner.
Older neighborhoods encourage more healthy lifestyles and reduce health risks because:
They have narrower street widths which reduce vehicle accidents
The mix of uses shortens the distance to destinations, encouraging more walking and bicycling lowering health risks
Long commutes, uncommon in older neighborhoods with close proximity to job centers, lead to increased stress that contributes to heart conditions
They have higher levels of social capital which has been shown to result in longer life spans and support good mental health
Diverse housing options available in older neighborhoods (4-plex, townhomes, single family, apartments) allow residents to age in place, preserving the social networks they built over decades and providing more opportunity to remain independent without relying on a vehicle.
“Social Capital is the social force that binds society together by transforming individuals from self-seeking and egocentric calculators, with little social conscience or sense of mutual obligation, into members of a community with shared interests, shared assumptions about social relations, and a sense of the common good”
Not everyone wants to live in an older neighborhood. Many people enjoy a longer commute to work and find the time on the drive home a good transition into their evening. While all that may be true, it does come at a cost to their health as they spend more time sitting in a car and less time being active throughout the day. It also impacts the health of others who suffer from the increased emissions from more cars on the roads and higher rate of accidents. It is important to remember this as we consider how our suburban communities are designed and how we manage their land use. Outright sprawl should be abandoned as a land use pattern. More communities should look to older districts when designing new neighborhoods to ensure they create healthy neighborhoods for all, where a trip to the corner store by foot is a given, bicycling to work is easy, and the ability to build social capital is supported.
