Trail Running Shaping New Housing

Once upon the time, housing developers spent a small fortune building golf courses to attract home buyers. Now, the New York Times tells us, they are carving miles of paths through the wild to attract the many home buyers who are avid trail runners. According to the National Association of Home Builders, trails are the No. 1 amenity potential homeowners cite when asked what
they would like to see in a new community, ahead of public parks and
outdoor pools,
Trails were cited by 57 percent of prospective buyers in a 2004 survey
by the association. How popular is trail running? The Times reports that the Outdoor Industry Foundation counts 40 million trail
runners nationwide as of 2005, up 22.1 percent from 1998. In the same period the
popularity of other wilderness activities that are more time-consuming
declined: backpacking was down 22.5 percent; mountain biking dropped
6.9 percent. Geezer isn’t good with numbers, he can divide 40 million into  with 300 million, roughly the population of the U.S. And he is doubtful that one in seven of us is a trail runner.