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| Value your health: head for the inner city, and swerve the ‘burbs | Value your health: head for the inner city, and swerve the ‘burbs |
| (4 months later) | |
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| Sat 7 Oct 2017 07.00 BST | |
| Last modified on Mon 27 Nov 2017 15.49 GMT | |
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| There’s something wonderful about research that puts a whoopee cushion on the seat of conventional wisdom. This week a study by the universities of Oxford and Hong Kong suggested that people in built-up urban areas are happier and healthier than people living the good life in the suburbs. Can this be true? | There’s something wonderful about research that puts a whoopee cushion on the seat of conventional wisdom. This week a study by the universities of Oxford and Hong Kong suggested that people in built-up urban areas are happier and healthier than people living the good life in the suburbs. Can this be true? |
| It seems absurd. Everyone knows, because we have been told so often that the inner cities teem with desperate, exhausted people who have nowhere else to go, surviving in crowds, stress, dirt and the endless, cacophonous demands of consumerism, eyes for ever downcast in fear that some witless bumpkin might misadvisedly hazard a breezy “good morning”. | It seems absurd. Everyone knows, because we have been told so often that the inner cities teem with desperate, exhausted people who have nowhere else to go, surviving in crowds, stress, dirt and the endless, cacophonous demands of consumerism, eyes for ever downcast in fear that some witless bumpkin might misadvisedly hazard a breezy “good morning”. |
| We have been told so often that the inner cities teem with desperate, exhausted people | We have been told so often that the inner cities teem with desperate, exhausted people |
| Cities, we are told, are the product of pitiless revolution – agrarian and industrial – uprooting humans from their bucolic landscapes and driving them into the pitiless, insatiable maw of a demonic machine for shattering hopes, dreams and nerves. | Cities, we are told, are the product of pitiless revolution – agrarian and industrial – uprooting humans from their bucolic landscapes and driving them into the pitiless, insatiable maw of a demonic machine for shattering hopes, dreams and nerves. |
| If the residents of the burbs are less happy than those still in the process of being macerated, it can only be, surely, because they’ve tried the city and it has already broken them quite, quite irreparably. Or maybe they’re just older. | If the residents of the burbs are less happy than those still in the process of being macerated, it can only be, surely, because they’ve tried the city and it has already broken them quite, quite irreparably. Or maybe they’re just older. |
| But apparently not. People fare better in the city not least, researchers claim, because in the city people walk more. This seems counter-intuitive, but I think it’s true. In the country, a walk tends to be an actual thing, done entirely for its own sake, as a specific activity, with time set aside for it. It can be a quite a production. There’s the debate, before even a single step, about where the car should be parked. Sometimes, by necessity, there are two cars involved, one for drop-off and one for pick-up. Who needs all that stress? | But apparently not. People fare better in the city not least, researchers claim, because in the city people walk more. This seems counter-intuitive, but I think it’s true. In the country, a walk tends to be an actual thing, done entirely for its own sake, as a specific activity, with time set aside for it. It can be a quite a production. There’s the debate, before even a single step, about where the car should be parked. Sometimes, by necessity, there are two cars involved, one for drop-off and one for pick-up. Who needs all that stress? |
| In the city, by contrast, one walks to get to places, sometimes quite quickly. (Bizarrely, this is often because the traffic is too bad to bother with such things as cars. Out-of-towners, probably.) In the capital, one sometimes even walks a long way underground, at those connecting stations with two lines some significant distance from each other. Often, in the city, one even walks to one’s walk. I have two big parks near me, and I tend to walk to both of them. I indulge in a different kind of walk when I get there. | In the city, by contrast, one walks to get to places, sometimes quite quickly. (Bizarrely, this is often because the traffic is too bad to bother with such things as cars. Out-of-towners, probably.) In the capital, one sometimes even walks a long way underground, at those connecting stations with two lines some significant distance from each other. Often, in the city, one even walks to one’s walk. I have two big parks near me, and I tend to walk to both of them. I indulge in a different kind of walk when I get there. |
| In the city, there is so much to walk to; art fairs, outdoor screenings of much-loved films, new areas to explore, demos. You can go on a demo every day of the week. These tend to involve a good deal of walking and hanging out with like-minded pals. That’s a sobering thought. We city dwellers would be a good deal less healthy and happy if we didn’t have such large numbers of things to protest against. | In the city, there is so much to walk to; art fairs, outdoor screenings of much-loved films, new areas to explore, demos. You can go on a demo every day of the week. These tend to involve a good deal of walking and hanging out with like-minded pals. That’s a sobering thought. We city dwellers would be a good deal less healthy and happy if we didn’t have such large numbers of things to protest against. |
| Are the woods dotted with reprobates because they’re empty? Or are they empty because they’re dotted with reprobates? | Are the woods dotted with reprobates because they’re empty? Or are they empty because they’re dotted with reprobates? |
| By contrast, there are places where this route to health seems unavailable because virtually no one walks at all. My home town was one. You’d say you’re popping out for a pint of milk, and everyone else would rise to say: “I’ll drive you!” A verbal tussle would then ensue, over the circumnavigation of 1,400 yards. | By contrast, there are places where this route to health seems unavailable because virtually no one walks at all. My home town was one. You’d say you’re popping out for a pint of milk, and everyone else would rise to say: “I’ll drive you!” A verbal tussle would then ensue, over the circumnavigation of 1,400 yards. |
| Not far from the housing estate where I grew up, near Glasgow, there’s a wood, through which the river Clyde runs. It’s beautiful, one of my favourite places. But it’s always empty, except for people training their fighting dogs or getting really drunk. It’s all a bit chicken and egg. Are the woods dotted with reprobates because they’re empty? Or are these woods empty because they’re dotted with reprobates? Certainly it was there that I first learned a downside of low-density living, the female millstone of unwanted attention from random creeps. (Never let anyone persuade you otherwise; the invisibility of middle age is awesome.) | Not far from the housing estate where I grew up, near Glasgow, there’s a wood, through which the river Clyde runs. It’s beautiful, one of my favourite places. But it’s always empty, except for people training their fighting dogs or getting really drunk. It’s all a bit chicken and egg. Are the woods dotted with reprobates because they’re empty? Or are these woods empty because they’re dotted with reprobates? Certainly it was there that I first learned a downside of low-density living, the female millstone of unwanted attention from random creeps. (Never let anyone persuade you otherwise; the invisibility of middle age is awesome.) |
| City planners will be excited by the news that piling everyone into high-density housing can now be seen as a kindly deed. They can have fat profits and a high horse at the same time. Still, in the capital at least, there is a paradox. Isn’t it astonishing that London is one of the less densely populated cities in the world, yet still manages to be a place where young people, whether healthy or not, despair of ever finding anywhere decent to live. | City planners will be excited by the news that piling everyone into high-density housing can now be seen as a kindly deed. They can have fat profits and a high horse at the same time. Still, in the capital at least, there is a paradox. Isn’t it astonishing that London is one of the less densely populated cities in the world, yet still manages to be a place where young people, whether healthy or not, despair of ever finding anywhere decent to live. |
| • Deborah Orr is a Guardian columnist | • Deborah Orr is a Guardian columnist |
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