Assessing the Influence of the Built Environment on Physical Activity for Utility and Recreation in Suburban Metro Vancouver

Background:Physical inactivity and associated co-morbidities such as obesity and cardiovascular disease areestimated to have large societal costs. There is increasing interest in examining the role of the built environment inshaping patterns of physical activity. However, few studies have: (1) simultaneously examined physical activity forleisure and utility; (2) selected study areas with a range of built environment characteristics; and (3) assessed thebuilt environment using high-resolution land use data.Methods:Data on individuals used for this study are from a survey of 1602 adults in selected sites acrosssuburban Metro Vancouver. Four types of physical activity were assessed: walking to work/school, walking forerrands, walking for leisure and moderate physical activity for exercise. The built environment was assessed byconstructing one-kilometre road network buffers around each respondent’s postal code. Measures of the builtenvironment include terciles of recreational and park land, residential land, institutional land, commercial land andland use mix.Results:Logistic regression analyses showed that walking to work/school and moderate physical activity were notassociated with any built environment measure. Living in areas with lower land use mix, lower commercial andlower recreational land increased the odds of low levels of walking for errands. Individuals living in the lower thirdof land use mix and institutional land were more likely to report low levels of walking for leisure.Conclusions:These results suggest that walking for errands and leisure have a greater association with the builtenvironment than other dimensions of physical activity.