Land Use and Built Environment

Where are Adults Active? An Examination of Physical Activity Locations Using GPS in Five US Cities

Holliday, KM
Howard, AG
Emch, M
Rodriguez, D
Evenson, K
2017

Increasing physical activity (PA) at the population level requires appropriately targeting intervention development. Identifying the locations in which participants with various sociodemographic, body weight, and geographic characteristics tend to engage in varying intensities of PA as well as locations these populations underutilize for PA may facilitate this process. A visual location-coding protocol was developed and implemented in Google Fusion Tables and Maps using data from participants (N = 223, age 18–85) in five states. Participants concurrently wore ActiGraph...

What Makes an Active Public Realm? Opportunities and Challenges for Research

Harvey, C
Rodriguez, DA
2017

Contemporary cities have more extensive public spaces than everbefore. Consider the vast expanses of highways, parking lots, and sprawling floor plans of malls and shopping centers. These are all, tech-nically, available for public use, the habitat for our everyday experiences outside the privacy of our homes, schools, and workplaces. Right outside our front doors, they are by far the most convenient places for physical activity and community engagement. Yet the omnipresence of...

Neighborhood Environment and Cognition in Older Adults: A Systematic Review

Besser, L
McDonald, N
Song, Y
Kukull, W
Rodriguez, DA
2017
Some evidence suggests that treating vascular risk factors(link is external) and performing mentally stimulating activities may delay cognitive impairment(link is external) onset in older adults. Exposure to a complex...

Urban Development Around Bus Rapid Transit Stops in Seven Cities in Latin-America

Rodriguez, DA
Vergel-Tovar, C
2027

Although bus rapid transit (BRT) has become a popular transportation innovation worldwide, little is known about the built environment around the stops of these systems. A typology of urban development around 81 BRT stops in 7 cities in Latin America was developed and their daily BRT ridership examined. Primary and secondary data collected around the stops were the basis for factor and cluster analyses. Ten stop types were identified, with some types including attributes consistent with expectations of transit-oriented development areas. Other stops captured conditions prevalent in...

Neighborhood Built Environment and Cognition in Non-Demented Older Adults: The Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis

Besser, LM
Rodriguez, DA
McDonald, N
Kukull, WA
Fitzpatrick, AL
2018

Preliminary studies suggest that neighborhood social and built environment (BE) characteristics may affect cognition in older adults. Older adults are particularly vulnerable to the neighborhood environment due to a decreasing range of routine travel with increasing age(link is external). We examined if multiple neighborhood BE characteristics are cross-sectionally associated with cognition in a diverse sample of older...

Park Use and Physical Activity Among Adolescent Girls at Two Time Points

Evenson, KR
Cho, GH
Rodriguez, DA
Cohen, DA
2018

This longitudinal study described park usage and assessed the contribution of parks to moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) among adolescent girls. High school girls from California (n = 131) and Minnesota (n = 134) wore a global positioning system (GPS) monitor and accelerometer for 6 consecutive days at two time points, one year apart. Park visits were classified by linking the GPS, accelerometer, and park and built environment data around home and school locations into a geographic information system. At baseline, 20% of girls visited a park at least once (mean 0.1 times/...

Deriving a GPS Monitoring Time Recommendation for Physical Activity Studies of Adults

Holliday, KM
Howard, AG
Emch, M
Rodriguez, DA
Rosamond, WD
Evenson, K
2018

Determining locations of physical activity (PA) is important for surveillance and intervention development, yet recommendations for using location recording tools like Geographic Positioning System (GPS) units are lacking. Specifically, no recommendation exists for the number of days study participants should wear a GPS to reliably estimate PA time spent in locations. This study used data from participants (N=224, age 18-85) in five states who concurrently wore an ActiGraph GT1M accelerometer and a Qstarz BT-Q1000X GPS for three consecutive weeks to construct monitoring day recommendations...

Active Travel, Public Transportation Use, and Daily Transport Among Older Adults: The Association of Built Environment

Yang, Y
Xu, Y
Rodriguez, DA
Michael, Y
Zhang, H
2018
To examine active travel and public transportation use among U.S.(link is external) older adults and the built environment characteristics associated with them. Total active travel, public transportation trips, travel purpose diversity, total and maximum distance traveled for older adults (>= 65 years) relative to middle age adults (45–64 years) as reported in the 2009 National...

A Novel International Partnership for Actionable Evidence on Urban Health in Latin America: LAC‐urban health and SALURBAL

Roux, AV Diez
Slesinski, SC
Alazraqui, M
Caiaffa, W
Frenz, P
Fuchs, R
Miranda, J
Rodriguez, D
2018

This article describes the origins and characteristics of an interdisciplinary multinational collaboration aimed at promoting and disseminating actionable evidence on the drivers of health in cities in Latin America and the Caribbean: The Network for Urban Health in Latin America and the Caribbean and the Wellcome Trust funded SALURBAL (Salud Urbana en América Latina, or Urban Health in Latin America) Project. Both initiatives have the goals of supporting urban policies that promote health and health equity in cities of the region while at the same time generating generalizable...

The Ridership Performance of The Built Environment for BRT Systems: Evidence from Latin America

Vergel-Tovar, C.
Rodriguez, D
2018
Despite the increasing popularity of BRT worldwide, there is a lack of empirical evidence regarding the built environment characteristics that determine BRT ridership. We examine associations between BRT station level demand and built environment attributes for 120 stations in seven Latin American cities. Using direct ridership models, we study whether underlying built environment factors identified using factor analysis and the package of these factors embodied in station “types” identified using cluster analysis were associated with higher ridership. Of the nine factors identified, those...