Land Use and Built Environment

A Typology of the Built Environment Around Rail Stops in the Global Transit-Oriented City of Seoul, Korea

Rodriguez, DA
Kang, CD
2020

Compact, diverse, walkable, and well-integrated development around mass transit has been shown to increase transit ridership, balance passenger flows, promote economic development, and improve quality of life. Developing station area typologies constitutes an important step in the planning and implementation of land development oriented toward transit. These typologies should reflect local priorities and market conditions, avoid a one-size-fits-all approach to station area development, and stimulate conversations regarding the roles transit-focused development can play in regional...

Urban Health and Health Equity in Latin American Cities: What COVID-19 is Teaching Us

Roux, AV Diez
Barrientos-Gutierrez, T
Caiaffa, WT
Miranda, J
Rodriguez, D
Sarmiento, O
Slesinksi, S
Vergaga, A
2020

Latin America is the most unequal and urbanized region of the world. The physical and social environments of Latin American cities, the lack of public health and health-care infrastructure, and pronounced social and health inequities make these cities especially vulnerable to COVID-19. It is too soon to know the true impact of the pandemic and how it will compare to the many ongoing health and environmental challenges facing Latin American cities. In this commentary, we highlight a few key lessons with major implications not only for COVID-19 but for urban health and health...

Physical Disorders and Poor Self-Rated Health in Adults Living in Four Latin American Cities: A Multilevel Approach

Vaz, C
Andrade, A
Silva, U
Rodriguez, D
Wang, X
Moore, K
Friche, A
Roux, AV Diez
Caiaffa, WT
2020
Considering that urban environments may affect self-rated health through behavioral and psychosocial mechanisms, the aim of this study was to investigate the association between self-rated health and perceived urban environment characteristics among adults living in four Latin American cities. Data is from a population-based survey by Development Bank of Latin America, encompassing adults between 20 and 60 years old in Buenos Aires, Lima, Mexico City, and Panama City. Self-rated health was measured using a single question and the response options were categorized as poor and good. The...

Park Use, Perceived Park Proximity, and Neighborhood Characteristics: Evidence from 11 Cities in Latin America

Moran, M
Rodriguez, D
Cotinez-O'Ryan, A
Miranda, J
2020
This study examines how park use may be associated with perceived park proximity, neighborhood-built environment and perceived social disorder in Latin American cities. The study uses self-reported data from the 2016 CAF survey, including 7,970 urban residents from 11 cities across Latin America. Results show positive graded associations between perceived park proximity and use, holding all others constant. Additional factors that were found to be associated with park use are neighborhood formality and related built-environment characteristics, including paved streets and sidewalks. Park use...

Life Expectancy and Mortality in 363 Cities of Latin America

Bilal, U
Hessel, P
Perez-Ferrer
Michael
Alfaro, T
Tenorio-Mucha
Friche, A
Pina, M
Vives, A
Quick, H
Alazraqui, M
Rodriguez, D
Miranda, J
Roux, AV Diez
the SALURBAL group
2021

The concept of a so-called urban advantage in health ignores the possibility of heterogeneity in health outcomes across cities. Using a harmonized dataset from the SALURBAL project, we describe variability and predictors of life expectancy and proportionate mortality in 363 cities across nine Latin American countries. Life expectancy differed substantially across cities within the same country. Cause-specific mortality also varied across cities, with some causes of death (unintentional and violent injuries and deaths) showing large variation within countries, whereas other causes of death...

Disentangling Associations Between Vegetation Greenness and Dengue in a Latin American City: Findings and Challenges

Dronova, I
Ribeiro, S
Bruhn, F
Sales, D
Schultes, O
Rodriguez, D
Cunha, M
Lima, L
Caiffa, W
Morais, MHF
Ju, Y
2021

Being a Re-emerging Infectious Disease, dengue causes 390 million cases globally and is prevalent in many urban areas in South America. Understanding the fine-scale relationships between dengue incidence and environmental and socioeconomic factors can guide improved dieses prevention strategies. This ecological study examine the association between dengue incidence and satellite-based vegetation greenness in 3826 census tracts nest in 474 neighborhoods in Belo Horizonte, Brazil during the 2010 dengue epidemic.

A Method for Estimating Neighborhood Characterization in Studies of the Association with Availability of Sit-down Restaurants and Supermarkets

Peng, K
Rodriguez, D
Hirsch, JA
Gordon-Larsen, P
Rodriguez, D
2021

Although neighborhood-level access to food differs by sociodemographic factors, almost all research on neighborhoods and food access has used a single construct of neighborhood context, such as income or race. Neighborhoods possess many interrelated built environment and sociodemographic characteristics, a condition that obscures relationships between neighborhood factors and food access. The objective of this study is to examine the association between neighborhood characterization and neighborhood food availability while accounting for the effects of many interrelated aspects of...

Health and Environmental Co-benefits of City Urban Form in Latin America: An Ecological Study

Avila-Palencia
Sánchez, BN
Rodriguez, DA
Ferrer, C
Miranda, J
Gouveia, N
Bilal, U
Useche, A
Wilches-Mogollon, M
Moore, K
Sarmiento, O
Roux, AV Diez
2021
Urban design features are often studied in relation to health and behavioural outcomes. They can also have major implications for environmental outcomes. However, the impact of these features on both health and environmental outcomes (co-benefits) is rarely examined. We investigated how urban landscape and street design profiles are related to jointly occurring health and environmental outcomes in Latin America cities. We used data from the Salud Urbana en América Latina (SALURBAL) project, which has compiled and harmonised data on built environment, environmental...

Heterogeneity in the Urban Scaling of Premature Mortality by City Definition in the United States

McCulley, EM
Mullachery, PH
Rodriguez, D
Roux, AV Diez
Bilal, U
2021
With more than half of the world’s population currently living in cities, there is a need to understand how city-level factors, such as city size, can influence health in cities. However, there are numerous ways to define and delineate city boundaries. We explored whether years of life lost (YLL), a measure of premature mortality, scales with population size in the United States (US) from 2010 to 2015 and examined whether these scaling patterns vary by city definition, using eight different definitions. Across all city definitions, YLL displayed a sublinear scaling behavior: larger cities...

Longitudinal Associations between the Neighborhood Built Environment and Cognition in US Older Adults: The Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis

Besser, L
Chang, L
Hirsch, J
Rodriguez, D
Renne, J
Rapp, S
Fitzpatrick, A
Heckbert, S
Kaufman, J
Hughes, T
2021
Few studies have examined associations between neighborhood built environments (BE) and longitudinally measured cognition. We examined whether four BE characteristics were associated with six-year change in global cognition and processing speed. We obtained data on 1816 participants without dementia from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis. BE measures included social destination density, walking destination density, proportion of land dedicated to retail, and network ratio (street connectivity). Global cognition was measured with the Cognitive Abilities Screening Instrument (CASI) and...