Approved research

The Impact of the Built Environment on Health and Wellbeing: Promoting Active Travel

Lay summary

This research proposal sets out to determine the extent to which unique characteristics attributed to the built environment impact upon individuals' health and wellbeing through increasing physical activity levels, predominantly 'active travel'; walking for recreation and commuting. Walking is linked to numerous health benefits and existing literature, urban planning frameworks and public health initiatives progressively centre around increase levels of walking. The hypothesis proposed is that built environment characteristics can have a significant influence on levels of walking. In particular, increased street connectivity, greenness and land use density leads to higher levels of walking and lower levels of noise and air pollution leads to higher levels of walking. The project will last 5 months, to be completed by 18th July 2019 and could have a significantly beneficial impact on public health outcomes by reviewing the way that active travel is promoted in the built environment and how developers, policy makers and public organisations can influence these outcomes.