Article
How the built environment affects physical activity: Views from urban planning

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Abstract

The link between the built environment and human behavior has long been of interest to the field of urban planning, but direct assessments of the links between the built environment and physical activity as it influences personal health are still rare in the field. Yet the concepts, theories, and methods used by urban planners provide a foundation for an emerging body of research on the relationship between the built environment and physical activity. Recent research efforts in urban planning have focused on the idea that land use and design policies can be used to increase transit use as well as walking and bicycling. The development of appropriate measures for the built environment and for travel behavior is an essential element of this research. The link between the built environment and travel behavior is then made using theoretical frameworks borrowed from economics, and in particular, the concept of travel as a derived demand. The available evidence lends itself to the argument that a combination of urban design, land use patterns, and transportation systems that promotes walking and bicycling will help create active, healthier, and more livable communities. To provide more conclusive evidence, however, researchers must address the following issues: An alternative to the derived-demand framework must be developed for walking, measures of the built environment must be refined, and more-complete data on walking must be developed. In addition, detailed data on the built environment must be spatially matched to detailed data on travel behavior.

Introduction

The link between the built environment and human behavior has long been of interest to the field of urban planning, particularly to the subfields of urban design and transportation planning. The theoretical, empirical, and practical work in these fields has generally aimed at the goals of enhancements to quality of life, improvements in system efficiency, or reductions in environmental impacts—in other words, the physical health of the community rather than the personal health of its residents. Direct assessments of the links between the built environment and physical activity as it influences personal health are still rare in urban planning. Yet the concepts, theories, and methods used by urban planners provide a foundation for an emerging body of research on the relationship between the built environment and physical activity.

The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of this foundation and outline the potential contributions from the field of urban planning toward the exploration of the relationship between the built environment and physical activity. We begin with a background section that defines key terms and describes how the interest in this topic has evolved within the field of urban planning and its traditional focus on travel behavior. The next section discusses the challenges associated with measuring characteristics of the built environment and travel behavior. We then turn to the theories used to assess the link between the built environment and travel behavior, and conclude with a discussion of the issues that must be addressed in extending this research to the question of the link between the built environment and physical activity.

Section snippets

Background

Urban planners use a variety of terms when referring to the built environment. Although these terms often seem interchangeable, the distinctions among them are important. “Urban design” usually refers to the design of the city and the physical elements within it, including both their arrangement and their appearance, and is concerned with the function and appeal of public spaces. “Land use” typically refers to the distribution of activities across space, including the location and density of

Measuring the built environment and travel behavior

Efforts to characterize the link between the built environment and travel behavior start with the nontrivial task of developing appropriate measures. The measures most commonly used by researchers reflect the availability of data as well as the traditional concerns of transportation planning and are not necessarily well suited to the study of the link between the built environment and physical activity. Recent improvements in the measurement of both the built environment and travel behavior are

Making the link between the built environment and travel behavior

Since the early 1990s, studies of the link between the built environment and travel behavior have appeared in the literature with increasing frequency. Recent literature reviews document over 70 studies published during the 1990s that have explored and quantified these relationships.25, 26, 27, 28

Studies of the built environment and travel behavior have focused almost exclusively on automobile travel. From a transportation perspective, the automobile is by far the dominant mode of travel

Extensions to physical activity behavior

Despite the focus on automobile travel, models of both trip making (as in equation 1) and discrete travel choices (as in equation 2) have provided several insights that are potentially helpful in understanding the link between the built environment and physical activity. Two important results that almost certainly pertain to the study of the built environment and walking are discussed below.

Conclusions

Walking and bicycling have been more successful as modes of exercise than as modes of travel. Compared to other modes of exercise, walking and bicycling are popular because they are relatively easy for the vast majority of the population and offer relatively little risk of injury. But compared to other modes of transportation, walking and bicycling play a minor role. The explanation is simple: Driving is considerably faster than walking or biking for most trips. But it may be possible to

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    Dr. Handy is presently affiliated with the Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California at Davis, Davis, California.

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