01556897

Component

https://doi.org/10.3141/2452-12

Recent interest has focused on how the built environment in residential neighborhoods affects walking and other physical activity. The neighborhood around the workplace has been examined far less. This study explored the neighborhood around the workplace and its correlation with the amount of walking, level of physical activity, body mass index, and perceived health of those who (a) worked away from home (N = 446) and (b) were retired or unemployed (N = 207). Study participants were recruited from environmentally diverse residential neighborhoods in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Minnesota, metropolitan area in 2004. Participants wore an accelerometer, kept a travel diary, and answered a survey. The workplace neighborhood environments were measured with a geographic information system. In bivariate assessments, many features of the workplace neighborhood environment were significantly, but modestly, correlated with walking for travel, including density, street pattern, and land use (commercial, office, and residential). Fewer environmental features were correlated with total physical activity, a result confirmed in multivariate analyses. Although several workplace neighborhood environmental variables were correlated with total walking, relevant to the field of transportation, the pattern of association with total physical activity was not as consistent or strong. Because many people spend a considerable amount of time at work, more research is needed on this topic.

01556363

English

pp 98-104

2014

Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board

9780309295390

Print

Figures; References; Tables

Built environment; Health; Human body mass; Neighborhoods; Walking; Workplaces

Physical activity

Twin Cities Metropolitan Area (Minnesota)

Pedestrians and Bicyclists; Planning and Forecasting; Society; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Mar 13 2015 8:49AM

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