TY - JOUR
T1 - A Hotspot of Walking in and around the Central Business District
T2 - Leveraging Coarsely Geocoded Routinely Collected Data
AU - Mazumdar, Soumya
AU - Bagheri, Nasser
AU - Chong, Shanley
AU - Cochrane, Tom
AU - Jalaludin, Bin
AU - Davey, Rachel
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank the ACT Health Directorate for funding this research and providing the survey data from the ACTGHS. Spatial data were sourced from a variety of ACT Government Directorates (including Environment and Planning; Territory and Municipal Services; and Justice and Community Safety). The authors are very grateful for Directorate staff for assistance with regard to data access and technical advice which made this research project possible.
Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank the ACT Health Directorate for funding this research and providing the survey data from the ACTGHS. Spatial data were sourced from a variety of ACT Government Directorates (including Environment and Planning; Territory and Municipal Services; and Justice and Community Safety). The authors are very grateful for Directorate staff for assistance with regard to data access and technical advice which made this research project possible.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, Springer Nature B.V.
PY - 2020/9/1
Y1 - 2020/9/1
N2 - A growing literature is pointing towards the prevalence of healthy lifestyles, such as adequate walking, in the Central Business District (CBD) of many cities. However, only one study has investigated the presence of walking hotpsots. Using coarsely geocoded, routinely collected survey data from the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), and a unique ‘overlap of spatial clusters’ approach, we investigated if a) There were patterns of clustering in walking behaviours, b) If these clusters were co-located and therefore associated with various built environment characteristics and c) What the demographic and active transport use profiles of the residents of these clusters were. A hotspot of walking was found in the CBD of the ACT, co-located with hotspots or spatial clusters of dwelling density, public transport frequency and destination accessibility. Residents of the hotspot walked approximately an hour more than the average ACT resident and had significantly higher odds of using active transport to workplaces relative to driving. Odds ratios of walking relative to driving to work were 9.20 (5.97, 14.18) and bicycling were 3.54 (1.87, 6.69) in the walking hotspot compared to non-hotspots. Policies directed towards creating a ‘CBD like’ built environment in various locations of cities or refurbishing and redesigning existing CBDs to make them more liveable helps encourage walking behaviors. In addition coarsely geocoded, freely available routinely collected survey data can be used to investigate relationships that may help drive policy.
AB - A growing literature is pointing towards the prevalence of healthy lifestyles, such as adequate walking, in the Central Business District (CBD) of many cities. However, only one study has investigated the presence of walking hotpsots. Using coarsely geocoded, routinely collected survey data from the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), and a unique ‘overlap of spatial clusters’ approach, we investigated if a) There were patterns of clustering in walking behaviours, b) If these clusters were co-located and therefore associated with various built environment characteristics and c) What the demographic and active transport use profiles of the residents of these clusters were. A hotspot of walking was found in the CBD of the ACT, co-located with hotspots or spatial clusters of dwelling density, public transport frequency and destination accessibility. Residents of the hotspot walked approximately an hour more than the average ACT resident and had significantly higher odds of using active transport to workplaces relative to driving. Odds ratios of walking relative to driving to work were 9.20 (5.97, 14.18) and bicycling were 3.54 (1.87, 6.69) in the walking hotspot compared to non-hotspots. Policies directed towards creating a ‘CBD like’ built environment in various locations of cities or refurbishing and redesigning existing CBDs to make them more liveable helps encourage walking behaviors. In addition coarsely geocoded, freely available routinely collected survey data can be used to investigate relationships that may help drive policy.
KW - Active transport
KW - Central Business District
KW - Downtown
KW - Hotspot
KW - SaTScan
KW - Walking
U2 - 10.1007/s12061-019-09321-7
DO - 10.1007/s12061-019-09321-7
M3 - Article
SN - 1874-463X
VL - 13
SP - 649
EP - 668
JO - Applied Spatial Analysis and Policy
JF - Applied Spatial Analysis and Policy
IS - 3
ER -
