Assessing the influence of the built environment on physical activity for utility and recreation in suburban metro Vancouver

Data on individuals used for this study are from a survey of 1602 adults in selected sites across suburban Metro Vancouver. Four types of physical activity were assessed: walking to work/school, walking for errands, walking for leisure and moderate physical activity for exercise. The built environment was assessed by constructing one-kilometre road network buffers around each respondent's postal code. Measures of the built environment include terciles of recreational and park land, residential land, institutional land, commercial land and land use mix.Logistic regression analyses showed that walking to work/school and moderate physical activity were not associated with any built environment measure. Living in areas with lower land use mix, lower commercial and lower recreational land increased the odds of low levels of walking for errands. Individuals living in the lower third of land use mix and institutional land were more likely to report low levels of walking for leisure.These results suggest that walking for errands and leisure have a greater association with the built environment than other dimensions of physical activity.Physical inactivity and associated co-morbidities such as obesity, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease are estimated to have high economic and social costs. Increasing physical activity is considered important to improve public health [1]. While most research on the determinants of physical activity focus on individual factors, there is increasing recognition that patterns of physical activity are also shaped by the contexts in which individuals live. Studies have shown that the social and built characteristics of places individuals reside can either promote or inhibit opportunities for physical activity [2-11].Relationships between the built environment and physical activity are not well understood and results are often not consistent across studies [12-16]. Several studies have found that individuals living in areas that have high re