Effects of green space on walking: Does size, shape and density matter?

Urban Studies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 57 (16) ◽  
pp. 3402-3420 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaohu Zhang ◽  
Scott Melbourne ◽  
Chinmoy Sarkar ◽  
Alain Chiaradia ◽  
Chris Webster
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Built Environment ◽  
Travel Demand ◽  
Green Spaces ◽  
Ordnance Survey ◽  
Planning And Design ◽  
Walking Activity ◽  
Urban Planning And Design ◽  
Density Matter

The role of the built environment in improving public health through fostering physical activity has come under increased scrutiny in recent years. This study investigates relationships between walking activity and the configuration of green spaces in Greater London. Pedestrian activity for N = 54,910 walking trip stages is gathered through the London Travel Demand Survey (LTDS), with routes between origin and destination mapped onto the street network from the Integrated Transport Network of Ordnance Survey. Green spaces were extracted from UKMap and agglomerated to form London’s hundreds of parks. Regressions of pedestrian activity on park configuration, controlling for built environment metrics, revealed that catchments around smaller parks have more walking trips. Irregularity of park shape has the opposite effect. Park density, measured as number of parks inside a catchment, is insignificant in regression. Parks adjacent to retail areas were associated with pronounced increases in walking. The study contributes to landscape, urban management, environmental policy and urban planning and design literature. The evidence provides implications for performance-oriented policy and design decisions that configure a city’s green spaces to improve citizens’ public health through enhancing walkability.

scholarly journals A state-of-the-art review of built environment information modelling (BeIM)

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1638-1654 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.H.M. Tah ◽  
A.H. Oti ◽  
F.H. Abanda
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Data File ◽  
Building Information Modelling ◽  
Engineering Construction ◽  
Information Modelling ◽  
Planning And Design ◽  
Urban Planning And Design ◽  
Building Information ◽  
3D City Modelling

AbstractElements that constitute the built environment are vast and so are the independent systems developed to model its various aspects. Many of these systems have been developed under various assumptions and approaches to execute functions that are distinct, complementary or sometimes similar. Furthermore, these systems are ever increasing in number and often assume similar nomenclatures and acronyms, thereby exacerbating the challenges of understanding their peculiar functions, definitions and differences. The current societal demand to improve sustainability performance through collaboration as well as whole-system and through-life thinking is driving the need to integrate independent systems associated with different aspects and scales of the built environment to deliver smart solutions and services that improve the well-being of citizens. The contemporary object-oriented digitization of real-world elements appears to provide a leeway for amalgamating the modelling systems of various domains in the built environment which we termed as built environment information modelling (BeIM). These domains include architecture, engineering, construction as well as urban planning and design. Applications such as building information modelling, geographic information systems and 3D city modelling systems are now being integrated for city modelling purposes. The various works directed at integrating these systems are examined, revealing that current research efforts on integration fall into three categories: (1) data/file conversion systems, (2) semantic mapping systems and (3) the hybrid of both. The review outcome suggests that good knowledge of these domains and how their respective systems operate is vital to pursuing holistic systems integration in the built environment.

The Development of Smart Public Spaces in the Greek Historic Centers

2021 ◽  
pp. 191-210
Author(s):  
Despina Dimelli
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
Historic Center ◽  
Planning And Design ◽  
Urban Planning And Design ◽  
Smart Technologies ◽  
Integrated Conservation

Historic centres constitute a substantial urban fabric which concentrate cultural elements that have been shaped through the centuries. The current chapter investigates the role of public spaces in Greek historical centres and the role of smart tools and applications in their integrated conservation. The paper examines three public spaces of Athens historic center and analyzes the threats and opportunities they face. Urban planning and design have an essential role in the historic centres' public spaces revival, and towards this direction, smart technologies can be decisive. The chapter evaluates parameters that shape historic public spaces as urban design, sustainable moblity, urban functions and participatory processes and it proposes the integration of ICT in these fields in order to make historic public spaces vibrant urban areas.

scholarly journals Role of the Built and Online Social Environments on Expression of Dining on Instagram

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 735 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vishwali Mhasawade ◽  
Anas Elghafari ◽  
Dustin T. Duncan ◽  
Rumi Chunara
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Built Environment ◽  
Online Social Networks ◽  
Health Research ◽  
Public Health Research ◽  
Time Of Day ◽  
Social Environments ◽  
Health Related Behaviors ◽  
Health Related

Online social communities are becoming windows for learning more about the health of populations, through information about our health-related behaviors and outcomes from daily life. At the same time, just as public health data and theory has shown that aspects of the built environment can affect our health-related behaviors and outcomes, it is also possible that online social environments (e.g., posts and other attributes of our online social networks) can also shape facets of our life. Given the important role of the online environment in public health research and implications, factors which contribute to the generation of such data must be well understood. Here we study the role of the built and online social environments in the expression of dining on Instagram in Abu Dhabi; a ubiquitous social media platform, city with a vibrant dining culture, and a topic (food posts) which has been studied in relation to public health outcomes. Our study uses available data on user Instagram profiles and their Instagram networks, as well as the local food environment measured through the dining types (e.g., casual dining restaurants, food court restaurants, lounges etc.) by neighborhood. We find evidence that factors of the online social environment (profiles that post about dining versus profiles that do not post about dining) have different influences on the relationship between a user’s built environment and the social dining expression, with effects also varying by dining types in the environment and time of day. We examine the mechanism of the relationships via moderation and mediation analyses. Overall, this study provides evidence that the interplay of online and built environments depend on attributes of said environments and can also vary by time of day. We discuss implications of this synergy for precisely-targeting public health interventions, as well as on using online data for public health research.

scholarly journals The Progressive Effects of Built Environments on Supporting Physical Activity Diversity in High-Density Areas: A Case Study in Shenzhen, China

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuan Gao ◽  
Kun Liu ◽  
Peiling Zhou ◽  
Hongkun Xie
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Built Environment ◽  
High Density ◽  
Mental Condition ◽  
Built Environments ◽  
City Development ◽  
Healthy City ◽  
Urban Forms ◽  
Planning And Design ◽  
Urban Planning And Design

Abstract Background: Physical activity diversity (PAD) is an essential indicator to present the vitality of health city, and how to improve PAD from the built environment perspective is a key issue for healthy urban planning and design, especially in high-density cities; Methods: This study selected Shenzhen, China as a representative case, combined the diversity of PA participants, types and occurrence times for the comprehensive understanding of PAD, fully used multiple source data for the measurement and statistical analysis of PAD and built environments, to discover the relationships between the built environment and PAD, and to explore the different effects in clustered and sprawled high-density urban forms; Results: PAD was unevenly distributed in Shenzhen, higher in the clustered areas and lower in the sprawled ares and the effects of the built environment on PAD were significantly different between two kinds of areas; Conclusions: the built environment supports PAD by progressive effects, in which accessibility is the necessary and funda-mental condition to activate individual PAs, inclusiveness is sufficiently supports the coaction of various kind of PAs to consolidate PAD, and landscape attractiveness furtherly aggregates more PAs to achieve higher PAD. To create accessible, inclusive, and attractive built environments are crucial ways to improve the vitality of healthy city development in high-density cities.

scholarly journals Soluciones basadas en la Naturaleza: estrategias urbanas para la adaptación al cambio climático.

2021 ◽  
pp. 243-262
Author(s):  
Raquel Rey Mellado ◽  
María Teresa Franchini Alonso ◽  
Cristina del Pozo Sánchez
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Adverse Effects ◽  
Mediterranean Area ◽  
Green Spaces ◽  
Adaptation Measures ◽  
Planning And Design ◽  
Urban Planning And Design ◽  
Impacts Of Climate Change ◽  
Water Vegetation

Cities will suffer the impacts of climate change in the next decades. These impacts will be different according to their geographical features, the distribution and number of green spaces, the characteristics of the exterior surfaces of their floors and the density of population, among other aspects. Given this situation, many cities have begun to adopt adaptation strategies to reduce their vulnerability to the adverse effects of the climate; among which Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) stand out, which respond to ecosystem services and climate challenges, and are classified from the main ecosystems in which they affect: water, vegetation and soil. Within this context, the interest of the SBN in the international field is analyzed and the adaptation measures included in urban strategies developed to respond to this task are reviewed. The review of interventions in cities of the Mediterranean area makes it possible to value the usefulness of the NBS for urban planning and design.

scholarly journals Role of citizen participation in the formation of city

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 13-16
Author(s):  
Senzekile Mlambo
Keyword(s):  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
City Government ◽  
Government Institutions ◽  
Planning And Design ◽  
Management Processes ◽  
Urban Planning And Design ◽  
Informal Traders

Hailed as one of the best examples of collaborative urban management practices between the local government and informal traders. In a postapartheid South Africa, there was a national desire to transform the old systems of governance, which in Warwick translated to city government institutions making an effort to include informal traders in the policy making and management processes. The main aim was to promote inclusive urban planning and design.

Urban health then and now, a reflection

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silje Kristin Nygård ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Urban Health ◽  
Health Professionals ◽  
Food Production ◽  
Green Spaces ◽  
Roles And Responsibilities ◽  
Planning And Design ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Urban Planning And Design ◽  
Health Function

‘‘Urban health then and now, a reflection (Physiotherapist, 15.03.2150)’ takes its starting point in the development of human settlements and population throughout history. On this basis, it envisions a future in which a shift to greener urban cities has led to various improvements in people’s health and social conditions, both globally and locally. As more and more people are living in cities and the greening of cities is underway, this vision and its exploration all but a fantasy. With added collaboration from health professionals, urban planning and design could support the creation of even more green spaces and greener buildings, leading to cleaner air, more physical activity, natural insulation of homes, carbon sequestration, local food production, increased biodiversity and ultimately, a time with more social cohesion and healthier and happier people. By never loosing focus of people’s health, function and physical activity, it reminds us that it might not be wholesale change that is at stake, but that a broadening of our professional identity, roles and responsibilities could contribute more broadly than we have thought so far.

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