No, it's not mental retardation, although that could be a factor. It's not walking.
In this interesting article, a theory is proposed that living in a town or city that is comfortable to walk around, and thus encourages walking, creates a vastly different cognitive mapping through which we see the universe than does living in a place where you drive everywhere. I have certainly seen the truth of this living in Europe, which incidentally tends to produce people with more liberal views, *except* in the burbs where people live distanced from other people and have to drive wherever they're going. Interesting theory. http://www.thesmartset.com/article/article03151301.aspx
