New York City, long seen as a mecca of hedonism and self-destructive indulgence, has witnessed a startling transformation over the past few years: life expectancy has increased dramatically to 78.6 years, nine months longer than the life expectancy in the rest of the US. Even more surprisingly, New York City's life expectancy is increasing at a faster rate than in other parts of the country; in 2004 alone, New Yorkers gained five months of life on average, far outpacing the national average increase of a month or two a year.
What accounts for this longevity?
New York City's plummeting homicide rate (down from 2,272 in 1990 to 579 in 2005), which mirrors nationwide crime trends, has little to do with it. Rather, researchers believe that New York City residents may simply be healthier than other Americans, in large part because -- unlike many other Americans -- they walk almost everywhere. As New York Magazine notes,
New York is literally designed to force people to walk, to climb stairs -- and to do it quickly. Driving in the city is maddening, pushing us onto the sidewalks and up and down the stairs to the subways. What's more, our social contract dictates that you should move your ass when you're on the sidewalk, so as not to annoy your fellow walkers....[T]he very structure of the city coerces us to exercise far more than people elsewhere in the U.S., in a way that is strongly correlated with a far-better life expectancy. Every city block doubles as a racewalking track, every subway station, a StairMaster. Seen this way, the whole city looks like a massive exercise machine dedicated to improving our health while we run errands.
The city as a massive gym? It's not as implausible as it sounds. As improved sanitation, better health care and health standards, and more stringent pollution controls have made cities healthier places to live overall, cities have become places where walking is easy and pleasant -- often more so than driving. And the research suggests that the more you walk, the healthier you are.
Across the country from New York, the residents of Portland, Oregon have gotten a different benefit from driving less. According to a new report from the group CEOs for Cities, Portlanders save an estimated $2.6 billion a year, or about three percent of the Portland region's annual economic output, because they drive 20 percent fewer miles than other US residents and thus spend less on cars and fuel.
Seen in vehicle miles traveled, the number is even more staggering: 100 million fewer miles traveled every year than the average US resident. The report estimates the economic value of those miles at $1.5 billion. Most of those savings get spent locally on housing, entertainment and food.
Not only do Portland residents walk more (presumably producing the same health benefits as it does in New York), they also live in compact communities, reducing the distance between work and home and shortening auto as well as mass transit commutes. And they enjoy very pleasant mass transit system, waiting in covered transit stops with monitors that indicate when the next train is coming, instead of what riders endure in many other cities: waiting in the weather for buses that may or may not come on time.
Image: flickr/moriza
