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COULD the street where you live be making you fat? That鈥檚 what a study of 450,000 Americans suggests.

and colleagues at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City gleaned the height, weight and address details of people living in the Salt Lake City area from a database of drivers鈥� licences. They then used census and map data to score neighbourhoods on various measures of 鈥渨alkability鈥�. People with a lower body mass index 鈥� indicating they are thinner rather than fatter 鈥� tended to live in areas with older buildings and where a higher proportion of people walked to work (, ). The average difference in BMI between the top and bottom 25 per cent of neighbourhoods was 1.28 for men 鈥� equating to 4.5 kilograms for someone 1.83 metres tall 鈥� and 0.95 for women, or 3 kilograms for someone 1.65 metres tall.

Building age is a factor in Salt Lake City, Smith says, as older houses tend to be surrounded by sidewalks, trees and shade, and to be close to shops, making it 鈥渆asy and pleasant鈥� to walk compared with newer neighbourhoods. 鈥淥lder homes were built with pedestrians in mind.鈥�

Making cities more walkable won鈥檛 necessarily keep people in trim, however, as they may choose areas to suit their behaviour, rather than vice versa, he says.