Healthy Communities and Urban Design: A Multi-Disciplinary National Analysis of Travel Behavior, Residential Preference, and Urban Design

At its core, research into Healthy Communities aims to connect the way cities are designed, the relationship between that design and active modes of transportation (walking and biking), and the potential health implications of designs that encourage or impede increased active transportation. This proposed research project is firmly and directly connected to that fundamental core through an examination of the connection between urban form and transportation behavior within and between cities across the country. This Healthy Communities and Transportation-Land Use project seeks to understand the relationship between urban form and active transportation (walking and biking) by comparing behavior within new…

At its core, research into Healthy Communities aims to connect the way cities are designed, the relationship between that design and active modes of transportation (walking and biking), and the potential health implications of designs that encourage or impede increased active transportation.  This proposed research project is firmly and directly connected to that fundamental core through an examination of the connection between urban form and transportation behavior within and between cities across the country.

This Healthy Communities and Transportation-Land Use project seeks to understand the relationship between urban form and active transportation (walking and biking) by comparing behavior within new urbanist and traditional suburban neighborhoods in carefully selected neighborhood pairings in cities across the United States.  In twenty different cities we have selected one new urbanist and one traditional suburban neighborhood by initial GIS analyses of their urban forms.  By including these “pairings” of neighborhoods within cities, and by including multiple cities across the country, we can both control for local policy and cultural conditions within a single city, and control for differences across cities.  Thus, we will be able to analyze the relationship of urban form to active travel in a way that has not previously been done.  We will conduct a survey of approximately 1,000 adults, develop a GIS analysis of urban form and land use variables of the different neighborhoods, and conduct a selective and on-site urban design review to validate and expand on the GIS-derived urban form data.  Our approach addresses salient themes in the transportation, planning and health literatures: a national study, surveying populations of diverse incomes, examining issues of self-selection, and addressing transportation and health outcomes for diverse community designs.

The basic research methodology is based on a pilot study by researchers at the University of North Carolina, and this OTREC proposal seeks to create a collaboration to perform a national analysis. Furthermore, the collaboration will provide results of interest to the current transportation, planning, health and policy literatures on community design and behavior. Expected areas of analysis include:

• Walking and driving activity differences, by neighborhood type and by sociodemographic variables
• Obesity (BMI) differences, by neighborhood type and by sociodemographic variables
• Vehicle Miles Travelled (VMT) differences (and thus CO2 differences) and transit use differences
• Vehicle ownership differences
• Social-community cohesion differences
• Livability differences
• Impact of residential preferences and decision making on transportation behavior

Descriptive statistics and parametric and non-parametric methods to describe differences across neighborhoods will be used. To account for differences in individual characteristics by neighborhoods, further analyses relying on regression models will be conducted. The specific regression model employed (linear regression, count regression, or logistic/ordered logistic regression) will depend on the outcome variable.

Collaboration
This proposed project is a major collaboration across fields, departments, and Universities.  Researchers from the University of Oregon and the University of North Carolina will work together representing departments of planning, architecture, and public policy, investigating a range of complementary issues including transportation behavior, physical activity, urban design, and the environmental psychology of transportation decision making.  This is a national research project, being conducted by researchers on both coasts of the country.