Ann Forsyth

Measuring the Built Environment for Physical Activity: State of the Science

Physical inactivity is one of the most important public health issues in the U.S. and internationally. Increasingly, links are being identified between various elements of the physical-or built-environment and physical activity. To understand the impact of the built environment on physical activity, the development of high-quality measures is essential. Three categories of built environment data are being used: (1) perceived measures obtained by telephone interview or self-administered questionnaires; (2) observational measures obtained using systematic observational methods (audits); and (3) archival data sets that are often layered and analyzed with GIS. This review provides a critical assessment of these three types of built-environment measures relevant to the study of physical activity. Among perceived measures, 19 questionnaires were reviewed, ranging in length from 7 to 68 questions. Twenty audit tools were reviewed that cover community environments (i.e., neighborhoods, cities), parks, and trails. For GIS-derived measures, more than 50 studies were reviewed. A large degree of variability was found in the operationalization of common GIS measures, which include population density, land-use mix, access to recreational facilities, and street pattern. This first comprehensive examination of built-environment measures demonstrates considerable progress over the past decade, showing diverse environmental variables available that use multiple modes of assessment. Most can be considered first-generation measures, so further development is needed. In particular, further research is needed to improve the technical quality of measures, understand the relevance to various population groups, and understand the utility of measures for science and public health.

The effects of neighborhood density and street connectivity on walking behavior: the Twin Cities walking study

A growing body of health and policy research suggests residential neighborhood density and street connectivity affect walking and total physical activity, both of which are important risk factors for obesity and related chronic diseases. The authors report results from their methodologically novel Twin Cities Walking Study; a multilevel study which examined the relationship between built environments, walking behavior and total physical activity. In order to maximize neighborhood-level variation while maintaining the exchangeability of resident-subjects, investigators sampled 716 adult persons nested in 36 randomly selected neighborhoods across four strata defined on density and street-connectivity – a matched sampling design. Outcome measures include two types of self-reported walking (from surveys and diaries) and so-called objective 7-day accelerometry measures. While crude differences are evident across all outcomes, adjusted effects show increased odds of travel walking in higher-density areas and increased odds of leisure walking in low-connectivity areas, but neither density nor street connectivity are meaningfully related to overall mean miles walked per day or increased total physical activity. Contrary to prior research, the authors conclude that the effects of density and block size on total walking and physical activity are modest to non-existent, if not contrapositive to hypotheses. Divergent findings are attributed to this studys sampling design, which tends to mitigate residual confounding by socioeconomic status.

Explaining Changes in Walking and Bicycling Behavior: Challenges for Transportation Research

As issues of traffic congestion, obesity, and environmental conservation receive increased attention globally and in the US, focus turns to the role that walking and cycling can play in mitigating such problems. This enthusiasm has created a need for evidence on the degree to which policies to increase walking and cycling travel have worked. This paper outlines the important challenges researchers face in their attempts to produce credible evidence on walking and cycling interventions. It closes by discussing matters to consider in such research endeavors, including the importance of clear conceptualization, sound research design, measurement innovations, and strategic sampling.

A Gender Agenda: New Directions for Planning Theory

Abstract Since the 1970s increased attention has been focused on gender in relation to planning practice, but not to planning theory. Feminist theory has much to contribute to planning theory, particularly in five areas: spatial, economic, and social relationships; language and communication; epistemology and methodology; ethics; and the nature of the public domain. In turn, gender-sensitive theory could contribute to research in five areas of practice and education.

Patterns of Obesogenic Neighborhood Features and Adolescent Weight: A comparison of statistical approaches

BACKGROUND Few studies have addressed the potential influence of neighborhood characteristics on adolescent obesity risk, and findings have been inconsistent. PURPOSE Identify patterns among neighborhood food, physical activity, street/transportation, and socioeconomic characteristics and examine their associations with adolescent weight status using three statistical approaches. METHODS Anthropometric measures were taken on 2682 adolescents (53% female, mean age=14.5 years) from 20 Minneapolis/St. Paul MN schools in 2009-2010. Neighborhood environmental variables were measured using GIS data and by survey. Gender-stratified regressions related to BMI z-scores and obesity to (1) separate neighborhood variables; (2) composites formed using factor analysis; and (3) clusters identified using spatial latent class analysis in 2012. RESULTS Regressions on separate neighborhood variables found a low percentage of parks/recreation, and low perceived safety were associated with higher BMI z-scores in boys and girls. Factor analysis found five factors: away-from-home food and recreation accessibility, community disadvantage, green space, retail/transit density, and supermarket accessibility. The first two factors were associated with BMI z-score in girls but not in boys. Spatial latent class analysis identified six clusters with complex combinations of both positive and negative environmental influences. In boys, the cluster with highest obesity (29.8%) included low SES, parks/recreation, and safety; high restaurant and convenience store density; and nearby access to gyms, supermarkets, and many transit stops. CONCLUSIONS The mix of neighborhood-level barriers and facilitators of weight-related health behaviors leads to difficulties disentangling their associations with adolescent obesity; however, statistical approaches including factor and latent class analysis may provide useful means for addressing this complexity.

Men in the valley: gay male life on the suburban-rural fringe

Abstract This study examines the geography of the population of gay men located in the Connecticut River Valley area of Massachusetts where, by the 1990s, a significant minority lived on the metropolitan edge and in rural towns. Previous research has focused on the rich social life of urban gay men or on the isolation of those in rural areas. In contrast, in this study, interview data indicated that many gay men have created a way of life that was gay, non-urban and home centered, with gay men integrated into the larger community. Interviewees described their lives in the region as being positively affected by a level of tolerance, if not complete acceptance, more often associated with large urban centers. Gay mens attitudes toward the relatively large and public lesbian population in the region were complicated. The legacy of lesbian separatism from the 1970s and early 1980s caused some division, and there had been some resentment on the part of gay men in being the less visible and powerful part of the gay and lesbian population. However, in the Valley lesbians had done much of the hard work of increasing acceptance of lesbian and gay people, and recently gay men and lesbians have collaborated on significant projects. Overall, a gay male culture has formed at relatively low densities indicating both the diversity of rural areas and the de-linking of gay social networks from urban cores and the presence of self-conscious diversity in rural areas. We don’t have a neighborhood we all live in and one or two bars that we all go to, or everybody flocks to a certain bar on Sundays at 3 o’clock, or another bar on Saturdays at 11 o’clock, or you’ll find us at this restaurant and that restaurant and this restaurant, only. But because we’re everywhere in the area, we sit in parking commission, we haul garbage, and we treat the sick and we teach schools, and we are police officers, and we are administrators, and we are clerical staff, and whatever. … I think we’re ahead of the curve in that way in that we’re very strong and … for the most part we are so comfortable with it that we don’t need to ghettoize ourselves. And yet we want to be around each other, and so volleyballs very popular. Potlucks are very popular. You know theres still a need for an opportunity for us to meet each other, but our day to day lives are lived in the larger community, and are involved in the larger running of our towns, and I think thats ahead of the curve for the larger general gay population. (Paul, age 35, human resources specialist, partnered, white, non-native, upper Valley resident, homeowner)

The Street Level Built Environment and Physical Activity and Walking: Results of a Predictive Validity Study for the Irvine Minnesota Inventory

The Irvine Minnesota Inventory (IMI) was designed to measure environmental features that may be associated with physical activity and particularly walking. This study assesses how well the IMI predicts physical activity and walking behavior and develops shortened, validated audit tools. A version of the IMI was used in the Twin Cities Walking Study, a research project measuring how density, street pattern, mixed use, pedestrian infrastructure, and a variety of social and economic factors affect walking. Both bivariate and multivariate analyses were used to assess the predictive value of the IMI. We find that while this inventory provides reliable measurement of urban design features, only some of these features present associations with increased or decreased walking. This article presents two versions of shortened scales—a prudent scale, requiring association with two separate measures of a physical activity or walking behavior, and a moderate scale, requiring association with one measure of physical activity or walking. The shortened scales provide built environment audit instruments that have been tested both for inter-rater reliability and for associations with physical activity and walking. The results are also useful in showing which built environment variables are more reliably associated with walking for travel—characteristics of the sidewalk infrastructure, street crossings and traffic speeds, and land use are more strongly associated with walking for travel, while factors that measure aesthetics are typically less strongly associated with walking for travel.

Standards for Environmental Measurement Using GIS: Toward a Protocol for Protocols

BACKGROUND Interdisciplinary research regarding how the built environment influences physical activity has recently increased. Many research projects conducted jointly by public health and environmental design professionals are using geographic information systems (GIS) to objectively measure the built environment. Numerous methodological issues remain, however, and environmental measurements have not been well documented with accepted, common definitions of valid, reliable variables. METHODS This paper proposes how to create and document standardized definitions for measures of environmental variables using GIS with the ultimate goal of developing reliable, valid measures. Inherent problems with software and data that hamper environmental measurement can be offset by protocols combining clear conceptual bases with detailed measurement instructions. RESULTS Examples demonstrate how protocols can more clearly translate concepts into specific measurement. CONCLUSIONS This paper provides a model for developing protocols to allow high quality comparative research on relationships between the environment and physical activity and other outcomes of public health interest.

Urban Design: Is there a Distinctive View from the Bicycle?

Would urban design considerations and practices be different if the experience of bicycling was given a more central place? Drawing on a review of international literature and practice, this paper compares the characteristics of cyclists with those of pedestrians and motorists, showing that cyclists have a substantial number of unique characteristics that warrant further investigation in terms of a special urban design response. Focusing on four issues—community layout, cycling facilities, analysis and design processes, and detailed design—the paper offers a framework and central considerations for cycling-oriented urban design. It concludes with a call to take the experience of cycling seriously in urban design. This involves moving beyond a concern with safe and convenient facilities and complete networks to a more substantial interest in the experience of the environment from a cyclists point of view.

Cities Afoot—Pedestrians, Walkability and Urban Design

Over the past century pedestrian access has declined steadily in most cities. With some exceptions, such as underground metro systems, each advance in transportation technology—from horse-drawn streetcar, to electric streetcar, ongrade and elevated railways, automobile and superhighway, airplane and airport—has degraded the pedestrian environment. High-speed traffic broke up the fine-grained pedestrian network and imposed barriers to free movement on foot. In ignoring the pedestrian experience, the street lost its intimate scale and transparency, and became a mere service road, devoid of public life. Modernist planning and design separated pedestrians from the automobile, shunting them off to raised plazas, skywalks, barren ‘greenways’, and sterile pedestrian malls. Alternative designs such as the pedestrian/automobile separation of post-war new towns such as Vallingby and Cumbernauld were eventually dismissed as failures or at best quirky examples from a past time. Downtown pedestrian spaces—from pedestrian malls, to festival market places and indoor shopping centres—either failed to attract pedestrians or when they did, were attacked as disconnected bubbles of activity. The automobile-oriented values of classical modernism have been codified in the transportation and street design standards that we struggle with today. Street patterns of most residential areas in the US built after 1950 (and emulated in new development worldwide) are based on the discontinuous cul-de-sac or loop pattern rather than the interconnected grid. Block sizes are too large to permit a range of route choices and land use patterns are coarse with activities widely spaced and segregated by type. Streets are over-scaled and frequently lack sidewalks in order to reduce construction and maintenance costs. Pedestrian linkages, present in classic designs such as Hampstead Garden Suburb and Radburn, are absent. Even in Asia and Europe, traditional centres of nonmotorized transportation, automobile use is on the rise. For decades urban designers have advocated more walkable cities but without much success in most locations. Finally, with new health research, governmental incentives and new regulations, as well as increased activism by pedestrians and bicyclists, the situation has begun to change. The case for better design and planning of the pedestrian environment is strong. Walkability is the foundation for the sustainable city. Like bicycling, walking is a ‘green’ mode of transport that not only reduces congestion, but also has low environmental impact, conserving energy without air and noise pollution. It can be more than a purely utilitarian mode of travel for trips to work, school or shopping, and can have both social and recreational value. It is also a socially equitable mode of transport that is available to a majority of the population, across classes, including children and seniors. Many recent health studies have demonstrated that walking Journal of Urban Design, Vol. 13. No. 1, 1–3, February 2008