Urban Planning Focus: Living at Street Level
Residential units at floor level add to street appeal.
Residential units at floor level add to street appeal.
Research has uncovered several ways that physical environments can encourage people to climb stairs.
While certainly lifestyle choices and other factors influence health, urban planners and landscape architects have long espoused the need for interconnected pedestrian networks to promote public health. Greenways are one strategy to create pedestrian connections.
Many studies have been done on pedestrian motivations, values, and constraints. A recent article concisely summarizes much of the research, and uses it to support a design framework for walkable cities and neighborhoods.
Although studies have shown how neighborhood features can affect the activity of adults, less is known about how these features might affect young adults. Researchers studied the physical activity of Boy Scouts (10–14 years of age) around their Houston homes.
People who visit woodlands more frequently as children are more apt to visit woodland spaces as adults.
Transportation and health experts continue to tout the benefits of walking for exercise and for neighborhood errands. One recent review examines eighteen separate studies on walking to determine common factors in the environment that might help or hinder walking, while another lays out guidelines to help quantify what makes a street or walkway comfortable for pedestrians—laying the groundwork for an assessment tool. Originally published in Issue 4, 2004.
Creating workplaces with employee health in mind is resulting in worksite design changes.
Greenway planning often has to encompass a myriad of goals and users. One significant goal, particularly in urban areas, is how to plan greenways that people enjoy and use. Two recent studies, covered in an issue of Landscape and Urban Planning devoted to greenways, address this topic by investigating people’s opinions about river corridor greenways.
Health-related behaviors, like many others, can be influenced by the physical environment. This book’s aim is to elucidate the connection.