(Re)Designing the built environment to support physical activity: Bringing public health back into urban design and planning

Abstract

While public health and urban planning fields worked closely to tackle communicable disease outbreaks in the 19th century, this collaboration faded during the 20th century. Over the last few decades, engagement in physical activity - even walking - has declined substantially, with serious impacts on population health. Recently there has been an emerging body of literature and guidance illustrating the role the built environment has in shaping health outcomes; much of this has focussed on physical activity behaviours. Associations between built environment attributes and physical activity have been reported by many studies, however the geographic scales at which these built environment attrib..