Newcastle University

Tim Townshend, director of planning and urban design at Newcastle University, says decades of creating car-focused urban environments is beginning to show in our waistlines.

“Our urban landscape is full of shopping malls and fast food restaurants, escalators and huge car parks with people battling to get the space closest to the doors so they don’t have to walk very far,” he said. "These environments are simply not designed for people to walk around in.

“We need to think seriously about what kind of environment we are creating for ourselves and have a sensible debate about what’s acceptable and what’s not in our towns and cities. Health needs to be back on the town planning agenda before it’s too late.”

With UK rates of obesity predicted to rise to half the population by 2050*, there’s not much time left to reverse the trend.

Our built environment and how it allows, or prevents, us from taking healthy and unhealthy lifestyle choices is now recognised as an area we know too little about.

Many of the examples in his co-edited book Obesogenic Environments: complexities, perceptions and objective measures come from the USA and Australia, where there are more low density car-orientated suburbs - often referred to as ‘urban sprawl’ - which have become a focus of concern in obesity research.

“Although we’re not as extreme as these countries we’re still making some of the same mistakes and some different ones too,” said Mr Townshend.  “We don’t tend to build very low density suburbs but we do go for lots of houses without any local services and poor transport links which force people into their cars.”

However, it is possible to ‘build in’ more active spaces into our towns and cities to avoid creating these environments, allowing people to take exercise without hardly noticing. Green spaces and street trees encourage more walking whereas graffiti and litter and poorly maintained areas deter pedestrians.

“In many ways it’s a win-win situation as we’re not talking about costly new ways of going about how we develop towns and cities in the future,” said Mr Townshend. “Planners already have the power to make a difference. For example, there is a special planning category for fast food restaurants so you can avoid having a street full of them, or resist placing them near schools or leisure centres. It just takes a bit of thought at the beginning of the planning process.”

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*Foresight (2007) Tackling Obesities: Future Choices – Project report. London: Government Office for Science, 2nd edition. www.foresight.gov.uk