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Toward a general model of built environment audits
Abstract
In response to the US obesity epidemic, researchers in urban planning and public health have developed a number of built environment ‘audits’ to evaluate the presence of physical health determinants in neighborhoods and public spaces. These audits are most often framed in value-neutral and objective terms, overlooking the distributive justice dimension of built environment evaluations. I argue that audits always imply some underlying definition of distributive justice, and can be typologized according to three major theories, namely those of Mill, Rawls, and Sen. The study concludes with a practical model for framing the distributive dimension of audits.
... Many of these studies also include the individual, social and environmental characteristics of the population which impact their use of the transport system. This is enabled through empirical data from various sources such as census (Boakye et al., 2022;Lewis, 2012), public transport ticket database (Bantis & Haworth, 2020), or travel surveys (Amorim & e Silva, 2024). ...
... While several tools exist that operationalize the CA within the context of health, there is a scarcity of capability measurement tools specifically addressing the context of PA promotion (Ferrer & Carrasco, 2010;Ferrer et al., 2014;Lewis, 2011Lewis, , 2012Till et al., 2021). ...
Levels of physical inactivity are high around the globe and have remained stable over the last decade. Additionally, important social disparities in physical activity behaviors challenge the field of physical activity promotion (Guthold et al., 2018, 2020). Physical activity is a complex health behavior that is influenced by behavioral factors at the individual level (so-called downstream factors) as well as by factors from the social environment (so-called upstream factors) (Ball et al., 2015; Lorenc et al., 2013). However, not only in research but also in policy there currently is a focus on downstream factors (Bauman et al., 2012; Rutter et al., 2017). From a research perspective, this implies limited evidence on upstream factors applied to the context of physical activity (Alcántara et al., 2020; Jaeschke et al., 2017; O'Donoghue et al., 2018). From a policy perspective, this implies that governments tend to hold individuals responsible for their health behavior and thereby evade their responsibilities for creating physical-activity-enhancing conditions for all people (VicHealth, 2015). In light of these challenges, this doctoral thesis aims at contributing a new perspective to research in physical activity promotion. It adopts a human-rights-based approach and outlines how a potential human right to physical activity enhances accountability for physical activity at the state level. Moreover, this work examines the implications that the human-rights-based approach has on opportunities for physical activity, with a special interest in the promotion of equity in these opportunities. To achieve this goal, the principles of proportionate universalism (Marmot et al., 2010) and empowerment (Rappaport, 1987; WHO, 2018), as well as Sen’s capability approach (Sen, 2009), will guide this work. Manuscript A shows that a human right to physical activity can be deduced from the established human rights to health, education, and rest and leisure. It characterizes this human right by defining its attributes of availability, accessibility, acceptability, and quality in the context of physical activity. The principle of non-discrimination creates a focus on vulnerable and marginalized groups and strives for equity. Finally, the manuscript also describes concrete obligations, which can be deduced from this right at the state level, including a state’s obligation to respect, protect, and fulfill the right to physical activity for all people. From a perspective of physical activity promotion based on the principle of proportionate universalism (Marmot et al., 2010), a human-rights-based approach presents shortcomings with regard to achieving equity in opportunities for physical activity. One reason lies in the narrow focus on equality in dignity, legal standing and legal status and not on equality of social or economic position (Chapman, 2010). Moreover, the approach is deemed unsuitable to address relative inequalities (Chapman, 2010). This is of concern since knowledge of and action upon relative inequalities play an essential role in physical activity promotion to develop suitable interventions and programs (Howden-Chapman, 2010). To overcome these challenges, this work complements the human-rights-based perspective to physical activity with Sen’s capability approach (Sen, 2009). Considering the assessment of both capabilities and functionings as relevant to assess physical activity comprehensively, Manuscript B seeks to contribute evidence to a general understanding of the empirical nature of capabilities and functionings. Spanning a multidimensional evaluative space based on Anand and van Hees’s (2006) assessment tool for well-being, the results demonstrate that capabilities and functionings are similar but different concepts that can be empirically appraised as such by a representative sample of N= 58,615 young Swiss men. Moreover, capabilities and functionings are shown to be associated with each other and with economic, social, and cultural factors in the study population. In sum, this work concludes that the capability approach offers important benefits to address upstream factors (such as the social determinants of health) and relative inequalities, but challenges with regard to established power structures remain on the way to achieving equity. Therefore, Manuscript C acts upon the principle of empowerment (Rappaport, 1987; WHO, 2018) and assesses to what extent scientists of a transdisciplinary research consortium succeed in co-producing new knowledge for the enhancement of opportunities for physical activity. The co-production of knowledge is informed by the bottom-up participation of target groups in different settings over a project period of five years. Based on Hall et al.’s (2008) conceptual model for evaluation of collaborative initiatives, the project life is separated into the phases of collaborative readiness, collaborative capacity, and collaborative products to assess collaboration processes and outcomes within the consortium. It is assumed that the transdisciplinarily co-created knowledge might potentially enrich current research on physical activity through the provision of new insights into upstream factors relevant for enhancing equity in the opportunities to be active. The results of the manuscript underscore the time- and resource-consuming nature of transdisciplinary projects, as well as the need for adequate financial and long-term funding, for adequate personal resources, and for a central coordinating organ. Although issues of established power relations are not explicitly addressed in the study, the interpretation of results reveals structural barriers in the form of legislation hampering opportunities for knowledge co-creation in an academic setting. In conclusion, a human-rights-based approach to physical activity complemented by bottom-up strategies to enable participation and empowerment of target groups seems to be a promising strategy to address physical inactivity and related social disparities at the population level. The process of empowering target groups to take control over their physical activity behavior requires that individuals value the goal of being physically active and that they are involved in the process of bringing about this goal (López Barreda et al., 2019). Despite the scarce knowledge on determinants of physical activity, future research should focus on aligning the application of both physical-activity-related upstream and downstream factors to requirements for action in real-world settings. Transdisciplinary research might be a promising step towards achieving this goal. However, the co-creation of new knowledge to enhance people’s opportunities for physical activity in an effective way requires exploring suitable strategies to counterbalance established power structures operating in academic and transdisciplinary settings.
... These reviews included some capability instruments that have not been included in the current review. The review by Mitchell et al. (2017) included instruments developed for different purposes, such as the assessment of the built environment in the context of the capability approach (Lewis 2012b(Lewis , 2012a, the assessment of capabilities for a healthy diet and physical activity (Ferrer et al. 2014) and the assessment of capability to utilise healthcare (Nikiema, Haddad, and Potvin 2012). These instruments were not eligible for inclusion because they did not assess capabilities that are relevant for an individual's general wellbeing in the context of the evaluation of interventions. ...
In health economics, proponents of the capability approach argue that the value of health improvements should be evaluated us broad domains which reflect the capabilities of an individual. Instruments have been developed to measure these domains. These instruments operationalise the measurement of capability in different ways. The objective of this study is to analyze specifically how instruments operationalise the capability approach.
Using a comprehensive pearl growing search methodology, we identified ten instruments. The content of these instruments was analysed in three stages. First, the definition of capability that was used for the development of an instrument was identified. Then, an analysis was conducted on how this definition was operationalised in the instrument’s development. Lastly, the content of the instruments was compared with the concept “option freedom”, which provides a more comprehensive definition of capability, to study whether the instruments measure capability or other aspects that are relevant for wellbeing assessment.
We conclude that, despite using a shared definition of capability, the instruments differ in their methods to measure capability. Some instruments might miss content that reflect the burdens that people experience while achieving their capabilities in certain contexts. This might be due to the unclear conceptualisation of capability by Sen.
... It helps to go beyond simple listings of the presence of general resources and abstract preferences of an average user. Interest in how various inhabitant groups actually make use of environmental resources in the pursuit of desired personal goals can be seen as an example of the Senean capability approach that Lewis (2011) presents as an eligible goal for health audits. We think that it can also be seen as a target for health promotion research more generally. ...
The associations between urban structure and inhabitants' experiences, behavior, and wellbeing are at the core of environmental health promotion research. Recent studies reveal partly contradictory findings: urbanization seems to pertain to both health problems and the promotion of healthier lifestyles. We argue that a place-based, multilayer analysis of health promotion processes can provide a key to the integration of the dispersed research. It can also facilitate research applications to urban planning solutions and help identify unique, context-sensitive solutions. We will illustrate this approach by presenting research findings from studies in Finland among children and adults utilizing a public participation GIS methodology: softGIS.
... This is where an audit of the environment would be useful; in principle, by objectively assessing the provision of goods in an area, such as the presence, quality and access of pavements and parks, more information about the context in which people live, work and recreate becomes known (cf. Lewis (2011) for the value-laden nature of built environment audits). A good scale at which to audit the built environment, therefore, would be the neighbourhood, which primarily includes an evaluation of public spaces that people may use within a certain radius of their house. ...
Policies aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions often focus on the need to change existing behaviours and social practices as well as to provide technological advances in energy supply, waste, transport, industry and infrastructure. While fundamentally important to the mitigation of climate change, little is written about the impact that achieving carbon dioxide reduction targets, particularly for the built environment, will have on individual and societal well-being and quality of life. This paper investigates how a set of measures can be developed to assess well-being in cities, both as they are at present and as they transition to ‘low-carbon-dioxide’ futures. It outlines the important relationship between well-being, low-carbon-dioxide development and the built environment. A strategy for obtaining and assessing well-being measures is explained, the measures are discussed and 100 selected measures are detailed. The paper ends by illustrating how these measures can be integrated into a wider study of well-being.
... Ultimately, urban residents' physical activity levels depend on many factors from diverse research domains including public health, time use and leisure studies, studies of nutrition and diet, urban planning and transportation [33] that all need to be considered simultaneously. Built environment audits are useful in evaluating physical health determinants of neighbourhoods and public spaces [34]. Social and cultural norms affect whether people use physically active transport methods [35] but can be altered significantly through community leadership, community participation in policy making, and public campaigns targeting attitudes and opinions. ...
Urban sustainability research, despite rapid growth in research activity in recent years, still lacks integrative conceptual and methodological approaches that account for the full spectrum of urban processes and variables that determine human and ecosystem health and natural resource use. Once developed, such approaches would allow assessment of cities and urban policy and planning options in terms of the extent to which they satisfy the biologically determined health needs of people and maintain the integrity of the ecosystems on which cities depend. Integrated analysis and assessment of cities with regard to human health, ecosystem integrity and resource use would build on evolutionary and historical perspectives, and assist in understanding current environmental and health impacts of urbanism and options for the future.
The primary aims of this review are to document capability applications in the health field and to explore the objectives and decision-rules of studies measuring capability more broadly. Relevant studies are identified using a literature search strategy known as “comprehensive pearl growing”. All studies with a primary focus on health are assessed individually, whilst a summary narrative analysis of the full review examines the objectives of capability studies. Four distinct groups in the health field are identified in the review: (1) physical activity and diet; (2) patient empowerment; (3) multidimensional poverty and (4) assessments of health and social care interventions. Different approaches to applying mixed methods, selecting capability dimensions and weighting capabilities are found across studies. There is a noticeable non-reliance on health status as a sole indicator of capability in health. In terms of objectives of studies measuring capability, although there is a lack of consistency, an objective related to sufficiency of capabilities appeared most often in the studies found in this review. Even though one of the appeals of the capability perspective is its underspecified nature, this review highlights the challenge of finding a coherent alternative to more established approaches of evaluation.
This chapter analyses walking as an everyday practice, which might have potential to improve the quality of life of urban dwellers as is suggested by voluminous policy discussion and scholarly literature in the field of urban planning. It analyses this assumption through exploring the shaping of walking experiences in both the short and the long term by asking: How do the qualities of immediate spatial and temporal experience merge into the everyday life of inhabitants? Do the daily walking habits of urban dwellers have a role in how they believe they can shape their quality of life in the future? The analysis draws upon walking-interview data with inhabitants of two Finnish cities. Interviews illustrated the multiplicity of perceived, qualitative temporalities of walking. We use and manage our walking time to open possibilities for various other experiences. The analysis shows that walking can offer individuals possibilities to enrich their everyday life and their relationships with their environment and enhance their quality of life. However, the general promise that walking enhances the liveability of cities must be put to the test and evaluated in relation to local socio-material conditions and individual spatio-temporal contexts of everyday life.
Active modes of transport for children, such as walking and cycling, have been linked to increased well-being through better health, social connectedness and independence. In order to plan, design and adapt built environments for more active travel to schools, planners require indications of how supportive urban environments are for walking and cycling. One method of evaluating the quality of the pedestrian environment is a walkability audit. This paper reports on the findings from the conduct of a state agency walkability audit of the built environment surrounding a primary school in Western Australia. A comparison of the results of this audit is made with data drawn from a photo collage exercise with school children. Interviews with planning practitioners and community advocates who use audits to inform and legitimise planning for active travel adds a third dimension on current issues of use.The primary purpose of the study is not to test the reliability of the audit, rather to investigate the findings of a publicly available walkability audit in relation to children's evaluations of the same space and explore the comparison in the context of current transport planning practice. The findings indicate a good synergy between the state agency audit and walkability issues raised by the children. Changes to the process of conducting an audit recommended, including the use of visual imagery and a collaborative audit to promote shared understanding.
Built environment audits, part of the “toolbox” for planning multi-modal urban transport systems, are used to evaluate the walkability of streets. Whereas the methodological features of audits have attracted attention from planning research, little attention has been paid to the institutional contexts where audits are developed and used. Drawing on literature on audit culture in contemporary institutions and on expert interviews with audit developers and professionals in Australia and New Zealand working with walking audits, three questions are addressed: Who uses walkability audits? How are they used? What substantive changes emerge from auditing practice? The knowledge of practice of auditing the built environment for walking is underdeveloped. While planners, engineers and advocates consider built environment audits useful in different ways, of concern is the use of audits to rationalise limited resources already devoted to infrastructure for walking, rather than produce substantive changes to the quality of the built environment for walking.
Neighborhoods walkability has become an important public health concern. The child's-eye view of safe and walkable environments is typically remiss from the literature. Particularly the experience of inner city kids, very different from that of suburban neighborhoods, remains unreported. The study reported here offers new insights based on the walking to school experience reported by the children of inner city neighborhoods of Los Angeles. Interviews with fifth-graders from five grade schools suggest that the dangers in their social milieu are a much greater concern for them than the physical milieu, which the walkability research typically emphasizes. The findings necessitate new policies.
This study examines ‘built environment audit’ frameworks currently used in policy responses to the US obesity epidemic. The study considers the degree to which the informational bases of audits are constrained by their underlying definitions of distributive justice, and which of three kinds of audit—utilitarian, general resource, or capability—and which is most appropriate for informing an urban design response to the obesity epidemic.
Walking or bicycling to school could contribute to children's daily physical activity, but physical environment changes are often needed to improve the safety and convenience of walking and cycling routes. The California Safe Routes to School (SR2S) legislation provided competitive funds for construction projects such as sidewalks, traffic lights, pedestrian crossing improvements, and bicycle paths.
A cross-sectional evaluation examined the relationship between urban form changes and walking and bicycle travel to school. Surveys were distributed to parents of third- through fifth-grade children at ten schools that had a completed SR2S project nearby. Two groups were created based on whether parents stated that their children would pass the SR2S project on the way to school or not.
Children who passed completed SR2S projects were more likely to show increases in walking or bicycle travel than were children who would not pass by projects (15% vs 4%), based on parents' responses.
Results support the effectiveness of SR2S construction projects in increasing walking or bicycling to school for children who would pass these projects on their way to school.
As global forces have reshaped urban landscapes over the past 2 decades, cities have typically responded with a range of "spectacular" developments, the most common of which have been waterfront projects. In this article we describe the transformation of Melbourne's urban riverscape from an industrial junkyard into a postindustrial "landscape of desire." A primary concern is identifying winners and losers in this restructuring. To this end, we resurrect and redefine the concept of the public interest. In Melbourne, the production of signature projects geared to global place marketing coincided with a collapse of democratic public planning. Urban development became design driven, more seductive, and more secretive. Urban planning practice was restructured along with the urban landscape.
This article examines the distribution of parks in Baltimore, Maryland, as an environmental justice issue. In addition to established methods for measuring distribution of and access to parks, we employ a novel park service area approach that uses Thiessen polygons and dasymetric reapportioning of census data to measure potential park congestion as an equity outcome measure. We find that a higher proportion of African Americans have access to parks within walking distance, defined as 400 meters or less, than whites, but whites have access to more acreage of parks within walking distance than blacks. A needs-based assessment shows that areas with the highest need have the best access to parks but also have access to less acreage of parks compared to low-need areas. Park service areas that are predominantly black have higher park congestion than areas that are predominantly white, although differences are less apparent at the city level than at the metropolitan level. Following Iris Young and others, we argue that conceptions of justice must move beyond distributive justice and address the social and institutional mechanisms that generate inequities. For Baltimore, we examine how segregation ordinances, racial covenants, improvement associations, the Home Owners Loan Corporation, and the Parks and Recreation Board created separate black spaces historically underserved with parks. These mechanisms ultimately fueled middle-class flight and suburbanization and black inheritance of much of Baltimore's space, including its parks. If justice demands just distribution justly achieved, the present-day pattern of parks in Baltimore should be interpreted as environmental injustice.
Dramatically increasing urbanization is observable worldwide and brings pressure on space within urban areas as the built environment intensifies. Considerable evidence suggests that contact with nature is important for city dwellers, although it is not known whether residents' appreciation of the forms of urban green spaces is constant across different contexts. More specifically, it has not yet been shown whether our appreciation of nature is innate and inherently human, is cultural and something that we learn, or is a mixture of both. This article describes an exploratory study consisting of 17 interviews carried out in Zurich, Switzerland. Kelly's repertory grid technique is used to identify preferred urban landscapes, which were contrasted with identified rejected landscapes. Principle components analysis and multidimensional scaling reveal a clear separation of cultural and biological modes of landscape assessment in some respondents. The research contributes to an understanding of the meanings of urban green spaces, which would in turn provide planners with a tool to match urban natural resource management with the needs of residents.
Land use planning decisions are recognised as being value judgements, yet the questions of what values and whose values are rarely addressed. Values may be absolute or relative, intrinsic or extrinsic, passionately emotional or coolly reasoned, and ‘measured’ in a multitude of ways: by rarity, economics, social or aesthetic interpretations. Using examples of land use planning in Western Australia, I examine some of the complex values brought into play. I conclude that we need to explore, rather than reject, the plurality of values we incorporate into planning decisions. Rather than imposing an artificial order on value confusion, we need to learn how to negotiate our decisions in a world of value complexity and diversity.
We present a pragmatic approach to assist planners in addressing racial inequities in park access. Utilizing the Los Angeles
metropolitan region as an example, we used Thiessen polygons to delineate a service area for each park, and described potential
park congestion or ‘pressure’ in each park service area. Results show that Latinos, African-Americans, and low-income groups
in general were likely to live close to parks with higher potential park congestion. On the other hand, predominantly White,
high-income areas were typically located close to parks with lower potential park congestion levels. The park service area
analysis presented here facilitates the identification of areas with greater park need and provides a pragmatic way to redress
existing disparities in park access. Built into a set of web-based decision support tools, the approach fosters greater community
participation and empowers local stakeholders in the process of park provision.
KeywordsParks-Los Angeles-Environmental justice-Greenspace
Rapid technological change, global environmental concerns, and other dramatic ecological and societal changes are rendering previous conceptualizations of environments, and the relationships between environment and behavior, inadequate. Following a brief review of earlier conceptualizations of environments, distinctions between the terms context, environment, behavior setting and situation are drawn. A contextual model that focuses on the behaviors of individuals or groups in response to a prompt, and the personal, social or physical factors that might affect them, is developed. Two types of contextual change are explored: gradual, evolutionary contextualshifts, and sudden or dramatic contextualtransformations. Application of a more fully contextual approach to the field of creativity is considered, and an example of organizational creativity focusing on developing and implementing customer service recommendations is used to illustrate the model. A concluding section considers the research implications of a more fully contextual approach to conceptualizing environments.@ 1998 Academic Press
The availability of accessible and attractive green spaces is an integral part of urban quality of life. This paper presents an integrated indicator designed for: (1) the monitoring of the urban green space provision against quantitative and qualitative targets; (2) the comparison between cities and city parts; (3) the assessment of the effects of future policy scenarios; (4) the indication of locations where action is required. The indicator development was guided by five principles: “citizen based”, “functional levels”, “preconditions for use”, “variety of qualities”, and “multiple use”. The parameters were derived from the available research on public preferences and use of green spaces. The indicator is made operational in a GIS-based working procedure starting from the residential places and based on a two-step approach: (1) The accessibility: which green spaces are within reach at different functional levels? (2) The attractiveness: which are the accessible green spaces’ qualities? The GIS-model was applied in four cities of Flanders (northern part of Belgium): Antwerp, Ghent, Aalst and Kortrijk. This article explains the underlying ideas and the construction of the monitoring tool and discusses the suitability as a touchstone for current and future policy as well as its possible guiding role in local planning situations.
Geographic research on parks has been wide-ranging but has seldom examined how and why people use parks, leaving these questions to leisure science, which privileges sociodemographic variables over urban socio-spatial explanations (eg, historical, political-economic, and location factors). This article examines recent geographic perspectives on park use, drawing upon environmental justice, cultural landscape, and political ecology paradigms to redirect our attention from park users to a more critical appreciation of the historical, socio-ecological, and political-economic processes that operate through, and in turn shape, park spaces and park-going behaviors. We challenge partial, user-orientated approaches and suggest new directions for geographic research on parks. Yes Yes
Schools provide settings for physical activity (PA), but objective tools for measuring PA are lacking. We assessed an instrument to directly observe group PA and measured the leisure-time PA of adolescents throughout the school day.
Leisure-time PA was studied by direct observation in 24 middle schools in Southern California using SOPLAY (System for Observing Play and Leisure Activity in Youth). SOPLAY uses momentary time sampling to record the activity of each individual as sedentary, walking, or very active.
The largest proportion of students visited activity areas at lunch time (19.5%), followed by before (4. 1%) and after school (2.1%). More boys than girls visited activity areas before school (33.4 vs 7.7) and at lunch time (148.8 vs 36.7). Boys in areas engaged in more moderate to vigorous PA than girls before school (59.6 vs 40%) and at lunch time (67.7 vs 51.7%).
Few students use opportunities to be physically active during lesiure time at school. Policies and environmental manipulations (e.g., supervision, equipment, structured programs) are needed to attract more adolescents, especially girls, to existing activity areas. The feasibility of SOPLAY for measuring group PA was established.
Purpose
This paper reviews existing environmental audit instruments used to capture the walkability and bikability of environments. The review inventories and evaluates individual measures of environmental factors used in these instruments. It synthesizes the current state of knowledge in quantifying the built environment. The paper provides health promotion professionals an understanding of the essential aspects of environments influencing walking and bicycling for both recreational and transportation purposes. It serves as a basis to develop valid and efficient tools to create activity-friendly communities.
Data Sources
Keyword searches identified journal articles from the computer-based Academic Citation Databases, including the National Transportation Library, the Web of Science Citation Database, and MEDLINE. Governmental publications and conference proceedings were also searched.
Study Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria
All instruments to audit physical environments have been included in this review, considering both recreation- and transportation-related walking and bicycling. Excluded are general methods devised to estimate walking and cycling trips, those used in empirical studies on land use and transportation, and research on walking inside buildings.
Data Extraction Methods
Data have been extracted from each instrument using a template of key items developed for this review. The data were examined for quality assurance among three experienced researchers.
Data Synthesis
A behavioral model of the built environment guides the synthesis according to three components: the origin and destination of the walk or bike trip, the characteristics of the road traveled, and the characteristics of the areas surrounding the trip's origin and destination. These components, combined with the characteristics of the instruments themselves, lead to a classification of the instruments into the four categories of inventory, route quality assessment, area quality assessment, and approaches to estimating latent demand for walking and bicycling. Furthermore, individual variables used in each instrument to measure the environment are grouped into four classes: spatiophysical, spatiobehavioral, spatiopsychosocial, and policy-based.
Major Conclusions
Individually, existing instruments rely on selective classes of variables and therefore assess only parts of built environments that affect walking and bicycling. Most of the instruments and individual measures have not been rigorously tested because of a lack of available data on walking and bicycling and because of limited research budgets. Future instrument development will depend on the acquisition of empirical data on walking and bicycling, on inclusion of all three components of the behavioral model, and on consideration of all classes of variables identified.
We tested the reliability of 3 instruments that assessed social and physical environments.
We conducted a test-retest study among US adults (n = 289). We used telephone survey methods to measure suitableness of the perceived (vs objective) environment for recreational physical activity and nonmotorized transportation.
Most questions in our surveys that attempted to measure specific characteristics of the built environment showed moderate to high reliability. Questions about the social environment showed lower reliability than those that assessed the physical environment. Certain blocks of questions appeared to be selectively more reliable for urban or rural respondents.
Despite differences in content and in response formats, all 3 surveys showed evidence of reliability, and most items are now ready for use in research and in public health surveillance.
Park-based physical activity is a promising means to satisfy current physical activity requirements. However, there is little research concerning what park environmental and policy characteristics might enhance physical activity levels. This study proposes a conceptual model to guide thinking and suggest hypotheses. This framework describes the relationships between park benefits, park use, and physical activity, and the antecedents/correlates of park use. In this classification scheme, the discussion focuses on park environmental characteristics that could be related to physical activity, including park features, condition, access, aesthetics, safety, and policies. Data for these categories should be collected within specific geographic areas in or around the park, including activity areas, supporting areas, the overall park, and the surrounding neighborhood. Future research should focus on how to operationalize specific measures and methodologies for collecting data, as well as measuring associations between individual physical activity levels and specific park characteristics. Collaboration among many disciplines is needed.
Researchers and policymakers increasingly identify active living-including walking and bicycling for travel and recreation-as a potential strategy to increase rates of physical activity in the United States. Understanding the impact of the built environment on physical activity levels requires reliable methods to measure potentially relevant built environment features. This paper presents an audit tool-the Irvine Minnesota Inventory-that was designed to measure a wide range of built environment features that are potentially linked to active living, especially walking.
The inventory was created through a literature review, focus group interviews, a panel of experts, and field testing in 27 settings. The inventory was developed in 2003-2004.
The Irvine Minnesota Inventory includes 162 items, organized into four domains: accessibility (62 items), pleasurability (56 items), perceived safety from traffic (31 items), and perceived safety from crime (15 items). (Some items are in multiple domains.) The inventory includes both a paper version and a version in Microsoft Access, to allow data to be input directly into the computer.
Limitations of methods used to develop the inventory are discussed. Strategies are offered for using the Irvine Minnesota Inventory to systematically and reliably measure characteristics of the built environment that are potentially linked to active living.
The Handbook of Practical Program Evaluation provides tools for managers and evaluators to address questions about the performance of public and nonprofit programs. Neatly integrating authoritative, high-level information with practicality and readability, this guide gives you the tools and processes you need to analyze your program's operations and outcomes more accurately. This new fourth edition has been thoroughly updated and revised, with new coverage of the latest evaluation methods, including: Culturally responsive evaluation Adopting designs and tools to evaluate multi-service community change programs Using role playing to collect data Using cognitive interviewing to pre-test surveys Coding qualitative data You'll discover robust analysis methods that produce a more accurate picture of program results, and learn how to trace causality back to the source to see how much of the outcome can be directly attributed to the program. Written by award-winning experts at the top of the field, this book also contains contributions from the leading evaluation authorities among academics and practitioners to provide the most comprehensive, up-to-date reference on the topic. Valid and reliable data constitute the bedrock of accurate analysis, and since funding relies more heavily on program analysis than ever before, you cannot afford to rely on weak or outdated methods. This book gives you expert insight and leading edge tools that help you paint a more accurate picture of your program's processes and results, including: Obtaining valid, reliable, and credible performance data Engaging and working with stakeholders to design valuable evaluations and performance monitoring systems Assessing program outcomes and tracing desired outcomes to program activities Providing robust analyses of both quantitative and qualitative data Governmental bodies, foundations, individual donors, and other funding bodies are increasingly demanding information on the use of program funds and program results. The Handbook of Practical Program Evaluation shows you how to collect and present valid and reliable data about programs. © 2015 by Kathryn E. Newcomer and Harry P. Hatry, and Joseph S. Wholey. All rights reserved.
For this cross-sectional study, high- and low-income study areas were selected among census tracts in St. Louis MO (“low-walkable” city) and Savannah GA (“high-walkable” city). Between February and June 2002, a telephone
In this major book Martha Nussbaum, one of the most innovative and influential philosophical voices of our time, proposes a kind of feminism that is genuinely international, argues for an ethical underpinning to all thought about development planning and public policy, and dramatically moves beyond the abstractions of economists and philosophers to embed thought about justice in the concrete reality of the struggles of poor women. Nussbaum argues that international political and economic thought must be sensitive to gender difference as a problem of justice, and that feminist thought must begin to focus on the problems of women in the third world. Taking as her point of departure the predicament of poor women in India, she shows how philosophy should undergird basic constitutional principles that should be respected and implemented by all governments, and used as a comparative measure of quality of life across nations.
Centrality within a city and neighborhood characteristics have often been used as indicators of access to employment and services in statements about urban form and accessibility, but there are reasons to question the appropriateness of doing so. This paper evaluates the importance of geographic context within the urban environment (both location within cities as well as neighborhoods characteristics) for individuals in Portland, Oregon. Because conventional accessibility measures cannot incorporate individual characteristics, space-time individual accessibility measures were used with multilevel modeling to isolate the effects of individual level variations from that of geographical context. The results show that the influence of context on individual accessibility is weak, as accessibility tends to reflect individual and household characteristics rather than the local urban environment. Accessibility cannot be determined from location within cities, or from land uses around an individual's home, implying that the use of urban design to influence accessibility is inappropriate.
John Rawls’s ‘political liberalism’ provides a firm moral basis for contemporary planning theory, offering both a procedure for arriving at the ethical principles which should govern a society, and the substantive principles of justice which he argues best embody the moral ideals of liberty and equality for constitutional liberal democracies. It offers an objective justification for public planning which does not require foundationalism, and fits a liberal democratic context. In 2001, Rawls’s Justice as Fairness: A Restatement summarized the revisions to (or clarifications of) his original theory over the previous 30 years. This article reviews aspects of his theory which are relevant to public planning, concluding that Rawls offers a normative rationale for planning, a basis for practical critique, a reason for hope, and a vision of reasonable, free and equal citizens cooperating to achieve justice as fairness.
Background:
Reliable and comprehensive measurement of physical activity settings is needed to examine environment-behavior relations.
Methods:
Surveyed park professionals (n = 34) and users (n = 29) identified park and playground elements (e.g., trail) and qualities (e.g., condition). Responses guided observational instrument development for environmental assessment of public recreation spaces (EAPRS). Item inter-rater reliability was evaluated following observations in 92 parks and playgrounds. Instrument revision and further reliability testing were conducted with observations in 21 parks and 20 playgrounds.
Results:
EAPRS evaluates trail/path, specific use (e.g., picnic), water-related, amenity (e.g., benches), and play elements, and their qualities. Most EAPRS items had good-excellent reliability, particularly presence/number items. Reliability improved from the original (n = 1088 items) to revised (n = 646 items) instrument for condition, coverage/shade, and openness/visibility items. Reliability was especially good for play features, but cleanliness items were generally unreliable.
Conclusions:
The EAPRS instrument provides comprehensive assessment of parks' and playgrounds' physical environment, with generally high reliability.
As an enduring social project, planning needs to come to terms with the social realities of 21(st)-century cities. Most Western cities today are demographically multicultural, presenting the challenge of a new urban condition in which difference, otherness, and plurality prevail. This essay asks whether there is a planning imagination capable of ressponding, to the challenges of diversity. I suggest and provide examples of four key qualities of such an imagination: political, audacious, creative, and therapeutic. Embracing these qualities constitutes a cultural change in planners' modes of thinking and practice.
It is argued that if planners are to recognize and support socially diverse neighbourhoods, it is important that they become better acquainted with both the form of diverse places, as well as the evaluation of that form. Thinking in these terms may also help planners adopt a particular language about diversity that is sensitive to the unique requirements of diverse places. A framework for evaluating the socially diverse neighbourhood from a design standpoint is suggested. Two sources are used: urban and community design that is specifically meant to create places that support social diversity; and ecological principles that are meant to improve the relationship between habitat and species diversity. This framework is applied to an evaluation of diverse areas in the city of Chicago and its surrounding suburbs. A multi-dimensional definition of diversity that includes income, race/ethnicity, age and family type is used. Forty-nine block groups satisfied the condition of being highly diverse in all four categories. It was found that these areas were mostly inner-ring, ‘blue-collar’ suburbs, often having the physical characteristics of strong edges, grids with commercial corridors and mixed housing types.
Recurring issues in the social sciences concern the distribution of public facilities such as parks and equity of access to them. Geographers have observed that access has perceptual as well as physical dimensions and that perceptions of difference can affect use of public space. This study explores the nature of greenways as public space and a set of issues related to equity of access to greenway trails in Indianapolis, Indiana. The study uses proximity as a measure of access and simple GIS analyses of census and other data to assess equality of access. Evidence is provided that suggests that minorities and the poor have disproportionate access to trails. It is also shown that populations adjacent to the trails differ and that the populations along particular trails are segregated. Spatial differences in trail populations are associated with historic land use patterns and population movements within the city. The implications of the findings of difference for use of the greenways system are explored. Implications for management of the greenways system—including achievement of the goal of linking neighborhoods—are also discussed.
The achievement of equity in the distribution of public resources is a goal of paramount importance to planners. Equitable distribution entails locating resources or facilities so chat as many different spatially defined social groups as possible benefit-i.e. have access. For planning purposes, what is of paramount importance is that planners and also their constituents understand what distributional principles underlie any geographic arrangement of public resources. This paper presents a prototype method with which planners can readily generate and evaluate various "equity maps" of resource distribution. The method exploits the visualization capabilities of GIS, which allow interactive exploration of the spatial relationships between public Facilities and socioeconomic characteristics.
Beginning with Healey's definition of planning as ''managing our co-existence in shared space'', this article asks what it means to manage our co-existence in cities of difference. The focus on difference is justified by referring to an emerging literature that identifies the issues and challenges involved in planning for multiple publics. The article elaborates four different ways in which multicultural or polyethnic cities and regions are a challenge to planning systems, policies, practices, and education and identifies four possible ways of responding to these challenges. One of these responses, political dialogue, becomes the focus of the final section of the article, a case study of a recent conflict in inner Sydney between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal residents over land use. Reflecting on the implications of this case study, a more 'therapeutic' approach to planning practice in certain contexts is recommended, and this is compared with existing models of communicative action.
This study attempts to comprehensively and objectively measure subjective qualities of the urban street environment. Using ratings from an expert panel, it was possible to measure five urban design qualities in terms of physical characteristics of streets and their edges: imageability, enclosure, human scale, transparency and complexity. The operational definitions do not always comport with the qualitative definitions, and provide new insights into the nature of these urban design qualities. The immediate purpose of this study is to arm researchers with operational definitions they can use to measure the street environment and test for significant associations with walking behaviour. A validation study is currently underway in New York City. Depending on the outcome of this and other follow-up research, the ultimate purpose would be to inform urban design practice.
The aim of decision analysis is normative. Consequently, at least in public spheres, one has to reflect on its normative foundation. Multi-criteria analysis (MCA) uses aggregated evaluations on several criteria to recommend a decision. The claim for the adequacy of the recommended solution is usually based on the assumption that the interests of the decision-maker(s) are adequately assessed by the MC model (see, for example, Munda G. 1996. Cost–benefit analysis in integrated environmental assessment: some methodological issues. Ecological Economics19: 157–168). I argue that as a prerequisite to a normative foundation, the criteria have to reflect not only the interests but possibly all values stemming from normative arguments of the decision-maker(s). These arguments might differ substantially from each other. This is especially true for environmental decisions. The integration of values will result in changes of the MCA understanding, criteria building, and aggregation method, and will not be possible without analytical capacities of the decision analyst in ethics. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Evaluability assessment involves key policymakers, managers, and staff in developing program theory and clarifying intended uses of evaluation information, thus helping solve problems that inhibit useful program evaluation.
Background:
To determine how trail characteristics may influence use, reliable and valid audit tools are needed.
Methods:
The Path Environment Audit Tool (PEAT) was developed with design, amenity, and aesthetics/maintenance items. Two observers independently audited 185 trail segments at 6 Massachusetts facilities. GPS-derived items were used as a "gold standard." Kappa (k) statistics, observed agreement and intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) were calculated to assess inter-observer reliability and validity.
Results:
Fifteen of 16 primary amenity items had k-values ≥ 0.49 ("moderate") and all had observed agreement ≥ 81%. Seven binary design items had k-values ranging from 0.19 to 0.71 and three of 5 ordinal items had ICCs ≥ 0.52. Only two aesthetics/maintenance items (n = 7) had moderate ICCs. Observed agreement between PEAT and GPS items was ≥ 0.77; k-values were ≥ 0.57 for 7 out of 10 comparisons.
Conclusions:
PEAT has acceptable reliability for most of its primary items and appears ready for use by researchers and practitioners.
This article explores the possible causal pathways through which neighborhoods might affect health and then reviews the existing evidence. Although methodological issues make the literature inconclusive, the authors offer a provisional hypothesis for how neighborhoods shape health outcomes. They hypothesize that neighborhoods may primarily influence health in two ways: first, through relatively short-term influences on behaviors, attitudes, and health-care utilization, thereby affecting health conditions that are most immediately responsive to such influences; and second, through a longer-term process of “weathering,” whereby the accumulated stress, lower environmental quality, and limited resources of poorer communities, experienced over many years, erodes the health of residents in ways that make them more vulnerable to mortality from any given disease. Finally, drawing on the more extensive research that has been done exploring the effects of neighborhoods on education and employment, the authors suggest several directions for future research.
Although accessibility to jobs, services and amenities is an important component of the quality of life, it is rarely articulated in operational definitions of the concept. This note stresses the importance of physical accessibility to social well-being in cities, and outlines and reviews several measures which could be used to reflect territorial variations in accessibility to specific goods. One measure-a modified version of the gravity model-is elaborated in detail, and its utility as a social indicator is illustrated using the example of accessibility to primary medical care in Edinburgh, Scotland.
The effect of the built environment on the quality of life of its residents is of growing interest. To investigate this properly, a method for measuring the physical condition of residential areas is required and this paper describes the development of such a tool. The Residential Environment Assessment Tool (REAT) is designed as a survey instrument, to be completed by an independent observer, to produce a contextual measure of a neighbourhood, reflecting both physical aspects and also the extent to which residents have established territoriality over the area. The tool is based on 28 items which are aggregated to give a total score, ranging between 0 and 68, and subdivided into 5 different domains to reflect different aspects of the environment. Inter-observer comparisons show that the tool is reliable, with kappa coefficients for most of the item scores exceeding 0.9. To investigate its validity the results were compared with responses to a detailed survey of individual residents and significant positive associations were found between most relevant items. The tool is being used for studies involving common mental disorders in the community and should be valuable for local authorities in targeting interventions to improve the physical condition of their area.
El autor sostiene que la crisis económica que ocurrió en septiembre de 2008 causada, según expertos columnistas y economistas mundiales, por el derrumbe del crédito hipotecario y su sistema financiero. No tiene su origen en este problema ya que va más allá, afirma que desde los años setentas cuando el auge económico se comenzó a trasladar la manufactura y la producción de bienes a otros lugares por ofrecer mano de obra más barata, con ello los trabajadores dejaron de percibir mejores recursos y para poder consumir los productos, el sistema financiero impulsado por los gobiernos abrieron discriminadamente el crédito a consumidores cada ves más escasos por falta de ingresos.
John Law argues that methods don't just describe social realities but are also involved in creating them. The implications of this argument are highly significant. If this is the case, methods are always political, and it raises the question of what kinds of social realities we want to create. Most current methods look for clarity and precision. It is usually said that only poor research produces messy findings, and the idea that things in the world might be fluid, elusive, or multiple is unthinkable. Law's startling argument is that this is wrong and it is time for a new approach. Many realities, he says, are vague and ephemeral. If methods want to know and help to shape the world, then they need to reinvent themselves and their politics to deal with mess. That is the challenge. Nothing less will do.
Lichfield N. (1971) Cost-benefit analysis in planning: A critique of the Roskill Commission, Reg. Studies 5, 157--183. The work of the (Roskill) Commission on the Third London Airport, and also that of its Research Team, was an outstanding contribution to the practice of decision-making in urban and regional planning. Nevertheless, at certain critical stages in their process the Commission was at serious fault. This paper examines these methodological weaknesses, and in particular, the Commission's unsatisfactory use of cost-benefit analysis and its inadequate treatment of issues of regional planning. Had the Commission made better use of the cost-benefit analysis as a framework for arriving at its decision, it is possible that an alternative conclusion would have been reached, namely the one subsequently reached by the Government, Foulness.
Geographical and political research on urban service delivery -- who benefits and why -- has proliferated during the past two decades. Overall, this literature is not characterized by a particular attention to the importance of method in drawing conclusions about spatial equity based on empirical studies. Specifically, there has been scant interest in the effect of geographic methodology on assessing the relationship between access and socioeconomic characteristics that are spatially defined. In this paper we take a spatial analytical perspective to evaluate the importance of methodology in assessing whether or not, or to what degree the distribution of urban public services is equitable. We approach this issue by means of an empirical case study of the spatial distribution of playgrounds in Tulsa, Oklahoma, relative to that of the targeted constituencies (children) and other socioeconomic indicators. In addition to the 'traditional' measure (count of facilities in an areal unit), we consider a potential measure (based on the gravity model), average travel distance, and distance to the nearest playground as indicators of accessibility. We find significant differences between the spatial patterns in these measures that are suggested by local indicators of spatial association and other techniques of exploratory spatial data analysis. The choice of access measure not only implies a particular treatment of spatial externalities but also affects conclusions about the existence of spatial mismatch and inequity.
As the epidemic of overweight increases among youth, research needs to examine factors that may influence children's participation in weight-related health behaviors. This study examined overweight children's perceived barriers to and support for physical activity compared with nonoverweight children.
Barriers to and support for physical activity were examined among 84 overweight children attending a summer fitness camp or a university-based weight loss clinic. Barriers and support levels were then compared with those of 80 nonoverweight children of a similar age range.
Body-related barriers were the most predominant barrier type among overweight youth, especially among overweight girls. Overweight children, particularly girls, reported significantly higher body-related, resource, and social barriers to physical activity compared with nonoverweight children and lower levels of adult support for physical activity.
Overweight children may be particularly vulnerable to body-related barriers to physical activity, and reducing such barriers may serve as physical activity intervention points most relevant for overweight youth. Future interventions may also benefit from enhancing support for physical activity from adults and peers.
Enhancing community environments to support walking and bicycling serves as a promising approach to increase population levels of physical activity. However, few studies have simultaneously assessed perceptions and objectively measured environmental factors and their relative association with transportation or recreational physical activity.
For this cross-sectional study, high- and low-income study areas were selected among census tracts in St. Louis MO ("low-walkable" city) and Savannah GA ("high-walkable" city). Between February and June 2002, a telephone survey of 1068 adults provided measures of the perceived environment and physical activity behavior. In this timeframe, objective measures were collected through environmental audits of all street segments (n =1158). These measures were summarized using 400-m buffers surrounding each respondent. Neighborhood characteristics included the land use environment, transportation environment, recreational facilities, aesthetics, and social environment. Associations were examined between neighborhood features and transportation- and recreation-based activity.
After adjusting for age, gender, and education, transportation activity was negatively associated with objective measures of sidewalk levelness and perceived and objective neighborhood aesthetics. It was positively associated with perceived and objectively measured number of destinations and public transit, perceived access to bike lanes, and objective counts of active people in the neighborhood. Recreational activity was positively associated with perceived access to recreational facilities and objective measures of attractive features.
These findings indicate that physical activities for transportation or recreational are associated with different perceived and objective environmental characteristics. Modifications to these features may change the physical activity behavior of residents exposed to them.