WHAT DEFINES WALKABILITY: WALKING BEHAVIOR CORRELATES (original) (raw)
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Walkability Means What, To Whom?:Difficulties and Challenges in Defining Walkability
2010
There has been considerable growth in public health research investigating the influence of the built environment on physical activity. Simultaneously, transport and planning professionals have been promoting a change from inactive to active transpor t modes to reduce traffic congestion and air pollution. A core concept in both areas of researc h is ‘walkability’. Walkable areas are varied and professional opinion on the level of walkability of an area can be contradictory. This study used a researcher-developed questionnaire to assess the en vironmental factors that influence walking behaviour. Professionals working within the area s of planning, architecture, politics, advocacy, public health and engineering were invited to compl ete the online questionnaire. All professions agreed that the presence of local quality functiona l w lking routes, the availability of numerous destinations within walking distance and the percep tion of safety were all key factors that influence th walk...
WALKABILITY AS AN URBAN DESIGN PROBLEM
The planning and design of the walkable environment is receiving more and more attention for its various benefits related to public health, sustainability, economy, or social life. Therefore, there is a growing need for knowledge about the walkability of the built environment. While urban planning, design, and transportation research have also examined walking in urban environments, a recently growing field of research usually referred to as walkability research have been actively investigating the relation between the built environment and walking behavior through correlation analysis. Although one must acknowledge the value of current walkability research to be used as the framework which can make significant contributions to urban design research and practice, it also has a few shortcomings in terms of applicability. There is also a problem that the design factors that are often discussed as promoting walking or creating 'pedestrian-friendly environments' in urban design theories and discourses are often based on little evidence and that these factors have been shown to be insignificant in the quantitative analyses on the amount of walking. This project aims to support urban design knowledge and practice and to contribute to the broader field of "walkability" by refining the methods and measures used to analyze the relation between walking behavior and physical environment. Its goal is to integrate knowledge from the medical field of walkability with urban design research and provide new empirical knowledge about the concrete level in which urban design and architectural practice operates.
Exploring the Relationship Between Health and Walkability
Open House International, 2019
This study aimed to broaden Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) by including healthy urban performance attributes of the residential neighbourhoods as an additional predictor for walking behaviour. First, the study reviewed the literature on TPB and walkability in residential environments, and then constructed a TPB model based on walkability to set the hypotheses. The study explored the correlations among walkability attributes and walkability behaviour through a survey conducted with residents in Ankara, Turkey (n= 220). To analyse the data, first confirmatory factor analysis and later, structural equation modelling were used. The findings of the study highlighted two aspects of planning for a walkable neighbourhood: (i) a walkability model based on the three constructs of TPB should not neglect the measured and experienced urban performance; (ii) utilizing pedestrian environment for walking as fully as possible requires a collaborative and an experiential approach as well as a multi-parameter decision-making process.
Designing healthy communities: Testing the walkability model
Frontiers of Architectural Research, 2017
Research from multiple domains has provided insights into how neighborhood design can be improved to have a more favorable effect on physical activity, a concept known as walkability. The relevant research findings/hypotheses have been integrated into a Walkability Framework, which organizes the design elements into nine walkability categories. The purpose of this study was to test whether this conceptual framework can be used as a model to measure the interactions between the built environment and physical activity. We explored correlations between the walkability categories and physical activity reported through a survey of residents of Tucson, Arizona (n =486). The results include significant correlations between the walkability categories and physical activity as well as between the walkability categories and the two motivations for walking (recreation and transportation). To our knowledge, this is the first study that reports links between walkability and walking for recreation. Additionally, the use of the Walkability Framework allowed us to identify the walkability categories most strongly correlated with the two motivations for walking. The results of this study support the use of the Walkability Framework as a model to measure the built environment in relation to its ability to promote physical activity.
Walkability: Perceived and measured qualities in action
2014
The research into walkability has two common approaches to the variables: one depends on measuring the spatial configuration of street networks and the other depends on operationalizing urban design qualities such as imageability, enclosure, transparency and complexity by measuring the actual physical environment. Environmental perception has often been a subject in research into wayfinding behaviour, but not so much in research into walkability. In this paper, we argue that it is possible to obtain a more accurate walkability forecast by comparing spatial configuration measures with the environmental perceptions of pedestrians to evaluate their effects on pedestrian movement levels. In order to do this comparison, three case areas were selected, all of which are central retail districts in İstanbul, and which have a similar socio-economic user profile, similar public and private transportation links with the city and a similar relationship with the waterfront. All the three case ar...
Hall, C.M. & Ram, Y. (2018). Walk score® and its potential contribution to the study of active transport and walkability: A critical and systematic review. Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trd.2017.12.018 ABSTRACT The Walk Score® index has become increasingly applied in studies of walking and walkability. The index assesses the " walking potential " of a place through a combination of three elements: the shortest distance to a group of preselected destinations, the block length, and the intersection density around the origin. The Index links a gravity-based measure (distance accessibility), with topological accessibility (street connectivity) measured by two complementary indicators that act as penalties in the final score (linearly expanded in the range 0 to 100). A systematic review of Scopus® and Web of Science® was conducted with 42 journal articles eventually being evaluated. Research was primarily undertaken in North American urban geographies. Analysis of walkability using Walk Score® is inconsistent. Twenty-nine papers do not exclusively rely on Walk Score® as a single measurement of walkability and add further estimates to better capture the multiple dimensions of walkability. In 33 studies the Walk Score® was used as an independent variable, and only once as a mediating-moderating variable. In eight papers (18%) the Walk Score® was a part of a bivariate correlation model. On no occasion was it used as a dependent variable. Results tend to only partly support the validity of Walk Score®. The paper concludes that the Index is best understood as a surrogate measure of the density of the built environment of a specific neighborhood that indicates utilitarian walking potential. Implications for, and potential areas of, future research are discussed. Keywords Active transport; Built environment; Leisure walking; Utilitarian walking; Walk Score®; Walkability Highlights • A critical systematic review of papers using the Walk Score® index. • Identifies use of the Walk Score® index as a variable in studies of walkability. • Evaluates extent to which hypotheses in Walk Score® publications have been supported or not. •Identifies the use of attributes in addition to Walk Score® in studies of walking.
Problem, research strategy, and findings: Supportive built environments for walking are linked to higher rates of walking and physical activity, but little is known about this relationship for socioeconomically disadvantaged (e.g., low-income and racial/ethnic minority) populations. We review 17 articles and find that most show that the built environment has weaker effects on walking and physical activity for disadvantaged than advantaged groups. Those who lived in supportive built environments walked more and were more physically active than those who did not, but the effect was about twice as large for advantaged groups. We see this difference because disadvantaged groups walked more in unsupportive built environments and less in supportive built environments, though the latter appears more influential. Takeaway for practice: Defining walkability entirely in built environment terms may fail to account for important social and individual/household characteristics and other non–buil...
Neighborhood Walkability and Active Travel (Walking and Cycling) in New York City
Journal of Urban Health, 2012
Urban planners have suggested that built environment characteristics can support active travel (walking and cycling) and reduce sedentary behavior. This study assessed whether engagement in active travel is associated with neighborhood walkability measured for zip codes in New York City. Data were analyzed on engagement in active travel and the frequency of walking or biking ten blocks or more in the past month, from 8,064 respondents to the New York City 2003 Community Health Survey (CHS). A neighborhood walkability scale that measures: residential, intersection, and subway stop density; land use mix; and the ratio of retail building floor area to retail land area was calculated for each zip code. Data were analyzed using zero-inflated negative binomial regression incorporating survey sample weights and adjusting for respondents' sociodemographic characteristics. Overall, 44 % of respondents reported no episodes of active travel and among those who reported any episode, the mean number was 43.2 episodes per month. Comparing the 75th to the 25th percentile of zip code walkability, the odds ratio for reporting zero episodes of active travel was 0.71 (95 % CI 0.61, 0.83) and the exponentiated beta coefficient for the count of episodes of active travel was 1.13 (95 % CI 1.06, 1.21). Associations between lower walkability and reporting zero episodes of active travel were significantly stronger for non-Hispanic Whites as compared to non-Hispanic Blacks and to Hispanics and for those living in higher income zip codes. The results suggest that neighborhood walkability is associated with higher engagement in active travel.
Journal of Transport and Land Use
The relationship between the built environment and walking behavior has been explored extensively. However, little research has been done to either differentiate between walking for transport and walking as activity or that applies urban design tools to walkability improvement based on environment-walking associations. Therefore, this study constructed perceived environment walkability factors to replace unidentified physical environments that varied among individuals and examined their associations with walking to a destination (purposive walking) and walking as activity (discursive walking), using factor analysis and structural equation modeling. Results suggest that residential density, land-use mix diversity, and pedestrian/traffic safety were associated with purposive walking while aesthetics and crime safety were associated with discursive walking. Land-use mix access and street connectivity were common correlates of both walking patterns. This study also explored how to apply...