Land Use and Built Environment

Space Syntax and Walking in a New Urbanist and Suburban Neighbourhoods

Baran, PK
Rodriguez, DA
Khattak, AJ
2008

Prevailing measures of street design have largely ignored the relational properties between local and global street design as correlates of walking behaviour. This study contributes to understanding relationships between the syntactical properties of street design and walking behaviour by examining whether space syntax measures in New Urbanist and conventional suburban neighbourhoods are associated with the walking patterns of residents in these communities. Relying on geographic information systems, survey data and travel diaries, the study relates control, local integration and global...

Neighbourhood Types, Travel and Body Mass: A Study of New Urbanist and Suburban Neighbourhoods in the US

Brown, AL
Khattak, AJ
Rodriguez, DA
2008

Using an ecological framework, this paper examines the body mass index (BMI), physical activity and travel behaviour of household heads in a US new urbanist neighbourhood relative to household heads of comparable conventional suburban US neighbourhoods. Using a quasi-experimental design, a new urbanist neighbourhood and five conventional suburban neighbourhoods were matched on age of development, assessed property values and regional accessibility. Self-reported height, weight, physical activity and travel behaviours were obtained from the household heads in each neighbourhood type....

Land Value Impacts of Bus Rapid Transit: The Case of Bogotá’s TransMilenio

Rodriguez, DA
Mojica, CH
2008

During the last decade, bus rapid transit (BRT) has revolutionized regional transportation planning in much of the developing and developed world. BRT went from being a fringe transportation option used in a handful of Brazilian and Australian cities to becoming a prominent mass transportation alternative for local and national governments. BRT is not a single concept; rather, it encompasses a variety of applications designed to improve the level of service of bus-based mass transportation to deliver comfortable, cost-effective mobility emulating rail transit (Wright and Hook 2007, 11). It...

Factors Influencing Implementation of Local Policies to Promote Physical Activity: A Case Study of Montgomery County, Maryland

Salvesen, D
Evenson, KR
Rodriguez, DA
Brown, A
2008

Policy interventions such as zoning ordinances, school facility siting guidelines, capital improvement programs, and park master plans hold particular promise for promoting physical activity, especially at the local level. Despite increasing attention to the relationship between built environment characteristics and physical activity, there is a paucity of research on the extent to which local policies can promote or hinder physical activity. Furthermore, the impact of local policies on physical activity should depend on how effectively the policies are implemented. Based on the...

STC Matching Grant Annual Report

Rodriguez, DA
2008

While the conventional approach to safety planning has emphasized crash analysis with police-reported crash information, transportation professionals increasingly recognize the importance of identifying potential crash risk and considering environmental characteristics. In this proactive approach, individuals’ perception of crash risk provides important information in identifying potential crash risk. As built environment characteristics such as the presence of crosswalks, sidewalks, and number of lanes, are expected to influence the levels of pedestrian and bicycle safety, this study...

The Sociodemographics of Land Use Planning: Relationships to Physical Activity, Accessibility, and Equity

Aytur, SA
Rodriguez, DA
Evenson, KR
Catellier, DJ
Rosamond, WD
2008

Little is known about relationships between attributes of land use plans and sociodemographic variations in physical activity (PA). This study evaluates associations between policy-relevant plan attributes, sociodemographic factors, and PA in North Carolina. Results suggest that land use plans that included non-automobile transportation improvements and more comprehensive policies to guide development were positively associated with both leisure and transportation-related PA. However, residents of counties with lower-income levels and higher proportions of non-white residents were...

The Role of Employment Subcenters in Residential Location Decisions

Cho, EJ
Rodriguez, DA
Song, Y
2008

In this paper we employ Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, a polycentric city with 10 employment subcenters, as a case study to explore the role of employment subcenters in determining residential location decisions. We estimate discrete choice models of residential location decisions: conditional logit models and heteroscedastic logit models with both the full choice set and sampled choices. We ënd that access to certain employment subcenters, measured in terms of generalized cost, is an important determinant of households’ residential location decisions. The proximity to speciëc...

Involvement of Park and Recreation Professionals in Pedestrian Plans

Evenson, KR
Aytur, SA
Rodriguez, DA
Salveson, D
2009

Professionals from many different disciplines are finding innovative ways to work together to increase physical activity to help create healthier communities. One process that can provide a focal point for promoting physical activity by park and recreation professionals, land use and transportation planners, public health practitioners, and other stakeholders is the development and implementation of pedestrian plans. A pedestrian plan is a public document that lays out a community’s vision for future pedestrian activity, identifies the actions required to realize that vision, ties...

The Built Environment and Health: Impacts of Pedestrian-Friendly Designs on Air Pollution Exposure

Nazelle, A De
Rodriguez, DA
Crawford-Brown, D
2009

In the wake of the growing popularity of pedestrian-oriented community designs, it is timely to assess potential risk trade-offs of such urban planning strategies. Pedestrian-friendly designs are currently being called for and implemented in the US to tackle in particular problems associated with insufficient physical activity in the population. Unintended consequences may emerge, however, especially due to potential increases in the inhalation of pollutants as the population walking or cycling in polluted environments increases. A risk assessment of such built environment...

Tradeoffs in Incremental Changes Towards Pedestrian-Friendly Environments: Physical Activity and Pollution Exposure

Nazelle, A De
Rodriguez, DA
2009

A microsimulation of individuals’ activities is used in the context of a risk analysis framework to assess the impacts of hypothesized changes to the built environment on personal energy expenditure and on inhalation of air pollutants. Uncertainty is assessed using Monte Carlo simulations and sensitivity analyzes. We find both simulated individuals that augment and others that reduce their energy expenditure and inhalation dose of pollutants, with median increases displaying larger magnitudes than the decreases. Up to 75% of the population has significant increases in energy...