ABSTRACT
It is important for urban planners to understand the relationships between outdoor walking and neighbourhood built-environment attributes: both macro built-environment attributes, i.e. residential density, land-use mix and intensity, street connectivity and retail density; and micro built-environment attributes, i.e. safety, pedestrian infrastructure and aesthetics. The relationships between outdoor walking and neighbourhood built-environment attributes have been studied in previous research, but correlations among (within group) and between (between groups) neighbourhood built-environment attributes have received less attention in studies on outdoor walking. This chapter focuses on outdoor walking levels of older adults’ in Birmingham (UK) and aims to (1) illustrate the capacity of GIS for generating objective measures of macro built-environment attributes; and (2) use GIS-measured macro built-environment attributes, together with perceived micro built environment attributes, to examine correlations among and between neighbourhood built-environment attributes. We describe how GIS techniques are used to combine different types of data to produce measures of macro built-environment attributes. The case of older adults in Birmingham shows that most GIS-measured macro built-environment attributes are negatively correlated with perceived micro built environment attributes. GIS-measured land-use mix, however, is not related to perceived micro built-environment attributes. The influence of these correlations on relationships between outdoor walking levels of older adults’ and neighbourhood built-environment attributes are discussed.
