Bad Infrastructure: The Biggest Loser

Hello friends and supporters,

I'm only slightly embarrassed to admit that I'm one of those people who count calories.  I know serving sizes, and how many calories in your average apple (70-80) or 1" piece cheddar (110).  I also have been known to frequent those weight loss websites.  My favorite is Jillian Michaels' of the show, Biggest Loser, fame.
Now before you go thinking this is going to turn into a sappy self-help blog, let me say this DOES get back to my key topics here--biking, climate and the things in between. Patience, dear reader.

I'm bringing up the cheesy weight loss websites, because a recent "success story" really caught my eye.  Kim, the happy success story star, wrote the following:
Growing up in California, I was skinny all through school. I ran track, roller-skated every day, and was very active.v  It wasn't until I moved to Florida at age 38 that I really started to put on weight...I felt I was gaining weight, so I joined a gym, but because of highway construction, it took too long to get there, and I failed to go regularly. I was lost — I had no idea what to do, and I gained almost 60 pounds in five years...The event that really prompted me to lose weight was turning 45. My fiancé and I moved to Colorado and it seemed as if everyone was fit and healthy except me! There were plenty of things to do — hiking, fishing, camping..."
http://www.jillianmichaels.com/fit/the-results/kim-loses-62-pounds

Kim ultimately lost 62 Ibs. before she got featured on the website.

It's been heavily documented by national and international statistical studies that one's physical environment can influence health.  This is true on the micro-scale (say, whether you live by a park or a power plant) or the macro-scale (whether you live in Colorado or Missouri, France or USA). In all cases, in the former location of the pairs,  a person living there has a much better shot of staying fit and staying healthy. The reasons behind this are fairly straightforward.  Infrastructure that opens up the way (literally, the broadway, street, boulevard, etc.) to more activity like walk or bike helps people get the exercise they need to be healthy. This link between our behavior and our physical environment is partly what inspired me to pursue city planning as a profession. For a fascinating story of the power of city planning, check out this TED story about Oklahoma City, and "How an obese town lost a million pounds" http://www.ted.com/talks/mick_cornett_how_an_obese_town_lost_a_million_pounds.html

Kim's story is a very telling personalized story of this same point: how Place can have profound impacts on an individuals exercise choices, and consequently their health.  Kim talks about culture--in Colorado everyone's doing outdoor things--but also about infrastructure--Florida's sprawl, dependence on highways, and construction--as key factors (oh, and Jillian's stellar 20 minute workout DVDs) impacting her behavior. With obesity rates continuing to rise year over year, this kind of story should garner some attention.  Providing bikeable, walkable, compact places, are not only key to the war on climate change, they may be just as integral in our war on obesity!  So let's make smarter Places!

That's one more reason I'm doing ClimateRide.  I'm well on my way, but still need your support!!
Thanks to the folks who helped me over the last two weeks with their generous donations.
Miles these 2 weeks: 85 miles.  Money: $380

Hello bike friends!

If any of you have been watching TV news last week (I don't usually but caught this) you probably saw human interest specials on the baby that was born in a car in Atlanta because of the massive chaos caused by the highly unusual 8 inches of snow.  Putting that puff piece aside, I thought this story, The Day We Lost Atlanta, in Politico, had a lot more interesting things to say:

The author brings together three issues that often seen as separate problems but are beginning to compound in really scary ways--massive and aging road systems, climate change, and suburban development.  Atlanta has for decades built roads and highways to serve suburban development which turn fuels more vehicle miles traveled virtually every year.  Transportation accounts for close 40% of greenhouse gas emissions nationwide--and in heavily car oriented place like Altanta, Houston, LA, much more than half the pie!

While no single weather event can be linked to climate change, the freak weather in Atlanta certainly fits the predictions of how climate change is slated cause global 'weirding' in the coming years.  So there you have it: we depend on an aging road system to support living far from where we work (what we urban planers call a live-work imbalance); the more we drive the more emissions we produce; emissions contribute to the global changes causing freak weather which stresses that fragile, over-extended infrastructure that holds it together.
The upside of this terrible feedback loop is that investing smart, more pedestrian/biker/transit friendly infrastructure has multiple benefits.  It's investment that's sorely needed for system in bad repair, reduces greenhouse gas emission, and by reducing dependence on cars helps us better prepare and adapt to crazy weather patterns.

TransForm, one of the two organizations I'm fundraising for, is working for these smarter infrastructure choices that get so many bird with one stone.

Here's one of a number of study's coming out recently that show investments made already in smarter infrastructure are working--changing behavior, and changing values, such that the younger generation want, and are able to, drive less.

So far this week--
Raised: $165 Ridden: 42 miles

My Musings on Cyclability, Sustainability, and their Crossroads

As you may know if you've found your way to this blog, this season I am endeavoring to participate in ClimateRide, a 250 mile advocacy ride for bikeability and sustainability, and fundraising effort to support nonprofits that are doing the heavy lifting to get us there.

My intent with this blog is both to keep my contributors (thanks guys!) up to date about my fundraising and bike training progress, but also to use it as a platform to talk about Cyclability, Sustainability, and their Crossroads.  I'll be sharing short insights (some my own, many from other's) on biking and climate change, and many topics in between such as health, clean air, safety, traffic that are at the crossroads of building a sustainable future.  I imagine I'll garnering much of the content from my many friends and colleagues that also passionate about these things and often share their discoveries and thoughts with me.

Without further adieu, I'll get started on my first blog topic:  last night's State of the Union Address. If you didn't see it, here's the upshot.  Obama said:  We're on our way to energy independence, we're keeping with an all-of-the-above energy development approach, solar is part of the solution, and Climate Change really, really is real.  Don't take my somewhat sarcastic tone the way;  I was actually relatively happy with the speech on this front.  Most satisfying: the President chose to speak about energy and climate change almost first thing.  It was the second topic, sandwiched between jobs and jobs--in the realm of State of the Union addresses, that's pretty good.  And while not quite as a good a line as the one about workplace policies for women that belong in episode of Mad Men (http://www.uproxx.com/tv/2014/01/president-obama-mad-men-state-of-the-union-address/), he punched right to poignancy with this line on climate change:

 "When our children's children look us in the eye and ask if we did all we could to leave them a safer, more stable world, with new sources of energy, I want us to be able to say yes, we did."

President Obama's approach, which emphasizes developing solar as a growth industry, making use of natural gas, and capping harmful emissions from the biggest pollution sources is, in my opinion, practical.  But my thought after hearing the speech was that, even if all of the initiatives Obama laid out in the speech got done in the next year (unlikely) it WOULDN'T BE NEARLY ENOUGH.  And it reminded my why doing this ride--and advocating for aggressive local and state policies, new approaches to infrastructure and changing our transportation culture are more a part of the solution than ever.

This week so far--
Biked: 33 miles  Raised: $165

By(ike) the way, if you haven't seen this brilliant YouTube expose on the stupidity of certain bike policies (namely giving tickets for not riding in the bike lane), you're missing out! http://youtu.be/W0Ui21AmA3M