Transportation
What's Making China Fat?
Obesity rates have skyrocketed in China over the last generation, at the same time that its cities have exploded. A group of researchers is now trying to pin down the relationship between the two.
Mariela Alfonzo just got back from a three-week trip to China, where she's been researching walkability in the rapidly expanding megalopolises of Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. And a lot of what she saw wasn’t exactly pedestrian-friendly. Kind of the opposite. In a scary way.
"Driving patterns are a real issue," says Alfonzo, a research fellow at NYU-Poly. "I almost got run over every single day I was there. And I was being attentive." She laughs about it now, but you can tell she's not kidding.