research >>pedestrian safety >>Built Environment, Safety, and Physical Activity

In Progress

To get a better understanding of the relationship between built environment, safety, and walking behaviors, the Traffic Safety Center is creating an initiative to develop an interdisciplinary research model
The need to better understand neighborhood design and its relation to people's likelihood of walking is clear. Early studies suggest that the growing "epidemic" of obesity—with over half of adults now overweight or obese—has roots in how one's own neighborhood is designed: elements such as whether sidewalks are present and, if they are, what they are like, what the zoning of the neighborhood is, and how wide the streets are. These same factors affect the actual or perceived safety for pedestrians and bicyclists in a neighborhood. Studies suggest that how a neighborhood is built can also influence other health outcomes, e.g., cardiovascular disease, low birth weights, asthma, and premature death.

One of the challenges in this research, however, is how to measure the built environment. Researchers have traditionally used census data, city planning data, self-report surveys and "audits"—information gathered through researchers' own observations—to determine walkability, and traffic safety researchers use injury data from police and health sources, but attempts to figure out how these types of data are connected to one another, and to physical activity itself, have been inadequate.

Under this plan, individuals from the fields of engineering, urban design, public health, city planning and community organizing would come together to evaluate built environments for their walkability and safety. The researchers would focus specifically on at-risk populations including older adults, children, low-income individuals, and communities of color.

TSC Resources

"Estimating Bicycle and Pedestrian Demand in San Diego," Lauren Buckland and Michael Jones. Presentation at the 2008 TRB Annual Meeting.

"How our built environment makes us fat, sick, depressed, and contributes to global warming—and what to do about it." Presented by Dick Jackson, Public Health Visiting Scholar. TSC Seminar 2007.

"Safety, Physical Activity, and the Built Environment," a special issue of the TSC Online Newsletter. Spring 2004.

"A Review of ITS-Based Pedestrian Injury Countermeasures." Bechtel, AK.  Geyer, J. Ragland, DR. TSC Research Report. 2003."A Review of ITS-Based Pedestrian Injury Countermeasures." Bechtel, AK.  Geyer, J. Ragland, DR. TSC Research Report. 2003.