Active transportation advocates constantly get accused of waging a “war on cars.” But when you look around our communities, it sure looks more like we’re in the middle of a war on walking and biking — and the wrong side is winning.
In today’s episode of The Brake, we sat down with Dr. Tepi McLaughlin, who co-authored of a provocative new paper that argues it’s time to name the “enemies of physical activity” and dismantle the policies they push, rather than just focusing on the additive benefits of building more sidewalks and bike lanes. And along the way, we talk about some of the hidden ways that corporations and policymakers have made non-automotive transportation so dangerous and rare, and what we can do to change it.
The following excerpt has been edited for clarity and length. Read a full unedited AI transcript (with typos) here.
Streetsblog: Tell me about the genesis of this paper.
Tepi McLaughlin: I’ve been in and amongst this physical activity world — walking and cycling — but also the sport and exercise side of things as well for my whole career. And I’ve become increasingly [convinced that] the way we increase population physical activity is to make it as convenient as possible, so it’s embedded in our natural daily lives.
This paper came about [because of] a really interesting story, actually. I was in [co-author] Grant [Ennis’s] neck of the woods in Paris for the International Society for Physical Activity and Health Congress last year; over 1000 delegates attend that conference. And there was a really interesting moment that really captured my attention, which was when somebody asked a question of one of the keynote speakers: “Who are the enemies of physical activity?”
This was in the context of a keynote speaker who’d been talking about competing interests and industry interests working against physical activity. But that question of “who are the enemies?” — it was met with this awkward laughter from the audience, the kind of awkward laughter that was unwilling to accept that we perhaps do have competing industries, and that [these industries] would perhaps perceive they would lose profit from actions to increase population physical activity.
It was a really interesting moment for me, that it didn’t feel comfortable acknowledging that we have enemies or competing industries in physical activity. Whereas we probably do quite easily recognize that we do have competing industries for other public health issues like tobacco control or junk food.
Streetsblog: Why do you think you heard that awkward laughter in the room at that conference? Why do so many people think that physical activity is inherently apolitical, when folks like you and I have spent a lot of our careers, in fact, researching the political barriers to getting people moving? Where does that assumption come from, in your view?
McLaughlin: To some extent it comes from a good place. People are saying, “We need to use positive message framing; we need to do all of the good things, like more bike lanes, more trees. Let’s be positive about this.”
But to some extent, that thinking around positive message-framing has perhaps misguided us to ignore the structural determinants [of] industry influence. So if there is going to be an organization that perceives that their profits might be harmed [by a pro-walking or pro-biking policy], then they’re going to be a noisy opposition to that policy that might increase population physical activity.
So let’s take the road lobby as an example. They profit from laws that result in more driving; this is not news to people that listen to this podcast! But in order to overcome this, we need to acknowledge that while positive message framing has a place, we do have to acknowledge that there are structural determinants that we need to unpick as advocates and researchers.
