How Fit is Your City?
Posted on May 24th 2010 2:00PM by Kristen SeymourFiled Under: Fitness
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ACSM ranked 50 of the nation's biggest cities using its American Fitness Index, which takes into account not only the types of factors listed above, but also things like health care access and how well the community supports physical activity. For example, a city (like Washington D.C.) with great public transportation will likely have citizens who walk more, which can increase that city's AFI rank. It also takes into account how much land is used for parks and public areas that can be used for running, biking and playing sports.
Some of the results were surprising -- we assumed Austin, Texas would rank higher than 10 -- while others weren't shocking at all. After everything New Orleans has been through in recent years, we couldn't have expected it to rank much higher than the 41 slot it received.
Rounding out the top five were Boston, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Seattle and Portland, Ore. The bottom five? Louisville, Ky., Detroit, Mich., Memphis, Tenn., Birmingham, Ala. and Oklahoma City, Okla. Many of the nation's largest cities (Chicago, New York, Los Angeles) fell right around the middle or higher.
Factors such as education, employment, poverty and disability rates proved to have high correlation with the study's findings. Cities that are home to more high school or college educated folks also tended to have better health statistics, while areas with larger unemployment, disability and poverty rates scored significantly lower on the AFI.
Not happy with where your hometown falls on that list? Maybe it's listed as a top walking city!
