“walkability” indices) have been developed and examined –. Some studies have focused on individual built environment characteristics – while in others combinations of characteristics (e.g. A number of measures have shown associations between the built environment and transportation behaviours, physical activity, body mass index (BMI) or obesity –. More than half of the world's population now lives in cities and this trend is rapidly accelerating, underscoring the need to understand the health impacts of urban living. While interventions to prevent obesity and promote healthy body weight are most often aimed at individuals, there is a growing recognition of upstream environmental factors, including the urban built environment, as potential targets for intervention,. The etiology of obesity is multidimensional and includes environmental, genetic and behavioral factors which ultimately lead to an energy imbalance reflecting both increased caloric intake and decreased energy expenditure due to inadequate physical activity,. Over the past two decades there has been a large increase in the prevalence of metabolic diseases such as obesity and diabetes in both developed and developing countries –. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Michael's Hospital and by the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES), which are funded by an annual grant from the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (MOHLTC). This study was supported by the Centre for Research on Inner City Health (CRICH) at St. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.įunding: This work was funded by a research grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Received: JAccepted: NovemPublished: January 14, 2014Ĭopyright: © 2014 Glazier et al. (2014) Density, Destinations or Both? A Comparison of Measures of Walkability in Relation to Transportation Behaviors, Obesity and Diabetes in Toronto, Canada. In our setting, the combination of both factors provided additional explanatory power.Ĭitation: Glazier RH, Creatore MI, Weyman JT, Fazli G, Matheson FI, Gozdyra P, et al. We conclude that both residential density and the availability of walkable destinations are good measures of urban walkability and can be recommended for use by policy-makers, planners and public health officials. The combination of high levels of both measures was associated with the highest levels of walking or bicycling (p<0.0001) and public transit use (p<0.0026) and the lowest levels of automobile trips (p<0.0001), and diabetes prevalence (p<0.0001). Residential density and the availability of walkable destinations were each significantly associated with transportation and health outcomes. Individuals in less walkable areas were up to one-third more likely to be obese or to have diabetes.

Individuals living in more walkable areas were more than twice as likely to walk, bicycle or use public transit and were significantly less likely to drive or own a vehicle compared with those living in less walkable areas. We depicted interactions between residential density and the availability of walkable destinations graphically and examined them statistically using general linear modeling. Data sources included the Canada census, a transportation survey, a national health survey and a validated administrative diabetes database. We examined associations between a previously published walkability measure and transportation behaviors and health outcomes in Toronto, Canada, a city of 2.6 million people in 2011. Our objective was to examine the individual and combined associations of residential density and the presence of walkable destinations, two of the most commonly used and potentially modifiable components of walkability measures, with transportation, overweight, obesity, and diabetes. Walkability measures have been developed to capture these features of urban built environments. The design of suburban communities encourages car dependency and discourages walking, characteristics that have been implicated in the rise of obesity.

Unwalkable disease wiki