What's in the History:
Zip Code and Our Home Life
Mail was primarily the communication method to inform American troops about their home life. During WW II, the Post Office implemented postal zoning in 1943. This system eventually evolved into the modern zip code and was introduced to the public in 1963. The term "ZIP" stands for Zone Improvement Plan. It is a basic format consisting of 5 digits, which allows mail sorting to become faster and can eventually be automated.
What's in the News:
"Life Expectancy in the U.S. Declined 1.8 years in 2020, CDC says" —-The Wall Street Journal
Region and Life Expectancy
The journal report not only pointed out that life expectancy decline remains the most significant drop since World War II but also shows our life expectancy correlated with cause-specific mortality.
At the beginning of this pandemic, people focused intensively on where this virus originated. This region-emphasized topic made me wonder if our geographic location also impacts our life expectancy.
What are the facts?
Fact 1: seeing our health and wealth through "Factfulness."
Hans Rosling, a Swedish physician, tells us a human progress story through his book Factfulness. According to his book, he thinks our life expectancy is directly associated with our income level, not necessarily related to our geographic area.
Rosling has his point, yet I was only partially convinced. When I looked closer at this map, it was apparent some people lived longer in other regions, even with the same income level. For example, within the same income level, people in Japan have a life expectancy of 85 years compared to people in the U.K., who only have a life expectancy of 81 years. The United States has a higher income level than Japan and the U.K., yet its average life expectancy was only about 78 years old.
Source: https:// apps.chiragjpgroup.org/catch/ via TED: Nature Genetics 2019
Fact 2: Seeing our health and environment through Dr. Patel's Exposome study.
Exposome is a concept that describes how an individual's exposure to the environment impacts biology and health. It is a study that considers both internal and external factors influencing human health.
In 2019, Chirag Patel, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, did research that challenged the "tension between home zip code versus genetic code." He analyzed an insurance database of almost 45 million people in the United States. The research picked 700,000 non-twin siblings and 56,000 pairs of twins to compare their genetic and environmental influences on their health. The study found that among those 560 widespread diseases, the cause influenced by biological deficiency is only 30%; the trigger impacted by the surrounding environment and lifestyle is more than 50%.
Why Environment Matters
From "you are what you eat" to "you are where you live."
Question: If our surrounding environment and lifestyle contribute 50% of our health outcomes. Can we change our setting to meet our health goals?
Our lifestyles include how we eat, drink, exercise, or whether we smoke. Our surrounding environment includes more factors, such as location context, housing and job proximity, air quality, streets, transit facilities, tree coverage, green infrastructure, etc. What can we change in these settings?
Trees vs. Mental Wellbeing
"Residents living in relatively barren buildings reported more aggression and violence than their counterparts in greener buildings. Moreover, levels of mental fatigue were higher in barren buildings, and aggression accompanied mental fatigue."
The quote above is from a study done by Ming Kuo and William C Sullivan. They investigated a neighborhood on the southern side of Chicago and found out that accessing green space transformed people's emotional states and social lives. Their discovery helped to establish a clear link between exposure to nature and our behaviors.
Streetfront vs. Our Attentions
According to other psychology professors, Rachel and Stephen Kaplan, they explained how we pay attention to our surroundings could be categorized in two ways-"Extension" (voluntary attention) and "Fascination" (involuntary attention).
For example, when we consciously look for the information the environment provides or try to navigate city streets, we use our voluntary attention. We exercise involuntary attention when we effortlessly give in to our surroundings, like daydreaming in a park or a relaxing afternoon stroll in the neighborhood.
If you want to test this theory, ask yourself if you ever felt tired when walking down Main Street in Disney World. In other words, if we make our streets more enjoyable to walk on. We do not necessarily "feel" like we are exercising. And we feel relaxed about going from point A to point B within a specific time frame. We subconsciously walk more steps because it is an engaging and effortless activity.
Mixed-Use vs. Walkability
What is "Mixed Use"? Have you ever encountered such a question when you look at a planner's map? Mixed Land Use means areas with various land use functions, such as commercial and residential. Simply put, it is a place for people to work, live, shop, and play within its designed perimeter.
Have you had such an experience: driving to a mall location, riding an escalator on the way to the gym floor, and starting your routine exercise? Have you ever wondered if you could consume similar calories by walking to the mall and walking up to the gym floor without "training "?
The photo above best describes what mixed-use entails. You can see people exercising and playing, but shoppers and diners are also in the same space. You will not only find walking people but parked cars and bikes on the streets as well. The example here showed us that we need various aggregate programs together, so commuting on foot becomes a convenient and enjoyable habit.
Let's imagine
Few of you might have heard of the LEED Neighborhood Rating System; it is a development standard encompassing design criteria that help the neighborhood reverse the contribution of climate change and enhance individual health and wellbeing. In the LEED-ND standard, the primary criteria are categorized as Smart Location and Linkage (SLL), Neighborhood Pattern and Design (NPD), and Green Infrastructure and Buildings (GIB).
These standards might appear complex and difficult to achieve at first glance, yet they essentially offer design elements to create a compact, walkable, mixed-use neighborhood with a proper connection to nearby communities. Besides the environmental and economic benefits of implementing these strategies, the development outcome eventually helps our health and wellbeing. That is because the designed neighborhood setting helps us walk more and enjoy a pedestrian lifestyle.
Imagine our well-thought-out neighborhood that offers essential uses, more trees, or more pleasant streets within a designated perimeter. We can establish a healthy lifestyle whether we make our home in Silver Spring, Four Corners, Hillandales, or Adelphi. Chasing specific zip codes to live in might be merely personal preference.
Last update: 1/04/2022, 2/23/2024
Notes and references:
“Life Expectancy in the U.S. Declined a Year and Half in 2020”— Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
According to CDC, the Leading Causes of Death in the United States are: Heart disease (1), Cancer (2), Covid-19 (3), Accidents/unintentional injuries (4), Stroke /cerebrovascular diseases (5), Chronic lower respiratory diseases (6), , Alzheimer's disease (7), Diabetes (8), Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis (9), Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis (10).
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