How important is the land use mix measure in understanding walking behaviour? Results from the RESIDE study

Hayley E Christian; Fiona C Bull; Nicholas J Middleton; Matthew W Knuiman; Mark L Divitini; Paula Hooper; Anura Amarasinghe; Billie Giles-Corti

Journal article

How important is the land use mix measure in understanding walking behaviour? Results from the RESIDE study

Hayley E Christian, Fiona C Bull, Nicholas J Middleton, Matthew W Knuiman, Mark L Divitini, Paula Hooper, Anura Amarasinghe, Billie Giles-Corti

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BEHAVIORAL NUTRITION AND PHYSICAL ACTIVITY | BMC | Published : 2011

DOI: 10.1186/1479-5868-8-55

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Abstract

BACKGROUND: Understanding the relationship between urban design and physical activity is a high priority. Different representations of land use diversity may impact the association between neighbourhood design and specific walking behaviours. This study examined different entropy based computations of land use mix (LUM) used in the development of walkability indices (WIs) and their association with walking behaviour. METHODS: Participants in the RESIDential Environments project (RESIDE) self-reported mins/week of recreational, transport and total walking using the Neighbourhood Physical Activity Questionnaire (n = 1798). Land use categories were incrementally added to test five different LUM..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Billie Giles-Corti Author Melbourne School of Population and Global Health

Related Projects (2)

ECO-RESIDE: AN ECONOMIC EVALUATION OF URBAN DESIGN AS A MEANS OF PROMOTING PHYSICAL ACTIVITY

The significance of this project lies in the health problem that it seeks to address and the intervention that is being evaluated. Physical ..

EXPLORING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN URBAN PLANNING AND HEALTH AND THE APPLICATION OF RESEARCH FINDINGS TO IMPROVE THE HEALTH AND WELL BEING OF AUSTRALIANS BY CREATING MORE HEALTHY AND SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES.

Globally there is growing concern about the health, social, environmental, and economic impacts of rising levels of inactivity and obesity, ..

Grants

Awarded by Western Australian Health Promotion Foundation (Healthway)

Awarded by Australian Research Council (ARC)

Awarded by NHMRC

Funding Acknowledgements

This research was funded by a Western Australian Health Promotion Foundation (Healthway) (#11828) and an Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage grant (#I PO455453). The Western Australian Land Information Authority ((c) 2003), Western Australian Department of Planning and Sensis Pty Ltd provided spatial data for the objective built environment measures. Hayley Christian and Nicholas Middleton were supported by a NHMRC Population Health Capacity Building Grant (#458668), Anura Amarasinghe while employed at The University of Western Australia was supported by Eco-RESIDE (NHMRC #458768), Billie Giles-Corti was supported by a NHMRC Principal Research Fellowship (#1004900) and Paula Hooper was supported by an Endeavour Europe Award (Australian Government Department of Education, Science and Training) and a scholarship for International Research Fees (SIRF) from The University of Western Australia. The authors acknowledge Dr Kimberly Van Niel, Mr Nicholas Middleton and Ms Bridget Beesley for developing GIS measures for RESIDE and Ms Rosanne Barnes and Ms Estee Lambin for their administrative support.