Can New Urbanism Encourage Physical Activity?: Comparing a New Urbanist Neighborhood with Conventional Suburbs

If neighborhood design can support or undermine active lifestyles, then residents of new urbanist neighborhoods can be expected to exhibit higher levels of physical activity than residents of conventional communities. This study compared various measures of physical activity for residents of a new urbanist neighborhood to those for a group of conventional suburban neighborhoods in central North Carolina, finding no statistically significant differences, even after adjusting for individual and household characteristics. However, we did detect differences in where people were physically active. Residents of the new urbanist neighborhood were more likely to be physically active in their neighborhood than were residents of conventional suburbs. This difference was due to their walking more for utilitarian purposes, as distinct from walking for leisure. Despite the limitations of a quasi-experimental research design, our results raise questions regarding new urbanism's ability to raise residents' overall levels of physical activity.