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Abstract
BackgroundPhysical inactivity and associated co-morbidities such as obesity and cardiovascular disease are estimated to have large societal costs. There is increasing interest in examining the role of the built environment in shaping patterns of physical activity. However, few studies have: (1) simultaneously examined physical activity for leisure and utility; (2) selected study areas with a range of built environment characteristics; and (3) assessed the built environment using high-resolution land use data.MethodsData on individuals used for this study are from a survey of 1602 adults in selected sites across suburban Metro Vancouver. Four types of physical activity were assessed: walking to work/school, walking for errands, walking for leisure and moderate physical activity for exercise. The built environment was assessed by constructing one-kilometre road network buffers around each respondent's postal code. Measures of the built environment include terciles of recreational and park land, residential land, institutional land, commercial land and land use mix.ResultsLogistic regression analyses showed that walking to work/school and moderate physical activity were not associated with any built environment measure. Living in areas with lower land use mix, lower commercial and lower recreational land increased the odds of low levels of walking for errands. Individuals living in the lower third of land use mix and institutional land were more likely to report low levels of walking for leisure.ConclusionsThese results suggest that walking for errands and leisure have a greater association with the built environment than other dimensions of physical activity.
Highlights
Physical inactivity and associated co-morbidities such as obesity and cardiovascular disease are estimated to have large societal costs
Walking for errands was associated with increasing commercial land, institutional land and land use mix which corresponds to several other studies finding that measures of land use mix or proximity to destinations are associated with walking for transport [9,26,50,51]
In contrast to previous studies, this study included a range of physical activity variables, assessed areas with a range of built environments and measured land use using high resolution spatial data
Summary
Physical inactivity and associated co-morbidities such as obesity and cardiovascular disease are estimated to have large societal costs. There is increasing interest in examining the role of the built environment in shaping patterns of physical activity. Physical inactivity and associated co-morbidities such as obesity, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease are estimated to have high economic and social costs. Several studies have found that individuals living in areas that have high residential density, land use mix, and street connectivity (i.e. neighbourhoods with high ‘walkability’) have increased levels of physical activity [6,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25] but consistent relationships between each of these variables and physical activity have not been found across all studies [15,16,26,27,28,29]. Many studies have found that increased access to green space increases physical activity [30,31,32,33,34,35] while others have not found significant relationships [26,36]
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