How Neighborhood Design and Location Affect Three Types of Walking: Results from the Washington, DC Area

Understanding how the built environment on a neighborhood scale is associated with individuals' walking has been a common research objective in transportation and urban planning. In contrast to existing literature, this study is based on the assumption that a neighborhood's location defined at regional scale may be associated with walking and that this association may be separately identifiable from the influence of the neighborhood built environment on behaviors. The findings indicated that walking for commuting purposes was more strongly associated with neighborhood location than the built environment, whereas walking for shopping-eating purposes had a stronger association with the neighborhood built environment. The results suggest that, without the provision of better public transportation service to suburban neighborhoods, walkable neighborhood development in suburbs may not be successful for encouraging walking trips for commuting purpose.