Urban Environment

A research team headed by Hollander studied how we look at neighborhoods/cities.  They conducted a study during which participants “looked at different scenes of New York City public buildings in a set up with an eye tracker in front of a monitor displaying images. Half of the images had design characteristics exemplary of traditional neighborhood design (TND) (like narrow streets, complex facades, and bilateral symmetry). Subjects tended to show greater eye fixation on building fenestration [openings in building envelope] in TND environments, as opposed to the non-TND environments.”

Portegijs and colleagues studied how neighborhood features influence the (self-reported) physical activity/mobility of older (79-94 year old) residents of a Finnish community. They asked study participants to indicate “destinations perceived to facilitate and barriers perceived to hinder outdoor mobility in their neighborhood. . . . analyses adjusted for age, sex, and physical performance showed that neighborhood destinations increased the odds for higher physical activity when located beyond 500 m from home . . . but not when located solely within 500 m . . .

Kuhlmann evaluated the effects of tearing down deteriorating houses on the condition of nearby homes. He investigated “whether exposure to targeted demolitions of abandoned and distressed housing affects changes in the external condition of nearby houses.  Using two waves of a property inventory in Cleveland, Ohio, [Kuhlmann’s] models suggest that, compared with a control group of houses located near vacant housing, proximity to demolitions decreases the likelihood that a property’s condition deteriorated between 2015 and 2018 and increases the likelihood that it improved.”

Hidalgo and colleagues studied how bonds to urban places are related to how well cared for those spaces are.  The team report that “Research in environmental psychology has found a positive relationship between place bonds and behaviors related to care and maintenance of place. Although this relationship has been analyzed in natural environments. . . . The participants [in this study] were . . . from eight different neighborhoods with different sociodemographic characteristics in one Spanish city.

Researchers linked living in walkable neighborhoods to living longer.  A study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, based on data collected in Washington state, written by Amram, Bhardwaj, Amiri, and Buchwald, determined that people “who live in highly walkable, mixed-age communities may be more likely to live to their 100th birthday.