Environment and Behavior http://eab.sagepub.com/ Design and Pedestrianism in a Smart Growth Development Julie Brand Zook, Yi Lu, Karen Glanz and Craig Zimring Environment and Behavior 2012 44: 216 originally published online 7 March 2011 DOI: 10.1177/0013916511402060 The online version of this article can be found at: http://eab.sagepub.com/content/44/2/216 Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com On behalf of: Environmental Design Research Association Additional services and information for Environment and Behavior can be found at: Email Alerts: http://eab.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://eab.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Citations: http://eab.sagepub.com/content/44/2/216.refs.html >> Version of Record - Feb 29, 2012 OnlineFirst Version of Record - Mar 7, 2011 What is This? Downloaded from eab.sagepub.com at UNIV OF PENNSYLVANIA on March 3, 2012 Article Environment and Behavior 44(2) 216 –234 Design and Pedestrianism © The Author(s) 2012 Reprints and permission: in a Smart Growth sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0013916511402060 Development http://eab.sagepub.com Julie Brand Zook1, Yi Lu1, Karen Glanz2, and Craig Zimring1 Abstract Research on urban walkability does not always make a clear distinction between design features supporting walkability and those leading to a sense of urban liveliness. Walkability, for this article’s purposes, entails the oppor- tunity for continuous movement across some distance and therefore engages both the local and global street networks. Urban liveliness, by contrast, may exist in isolated pockets that provide limited support for physical activity. This case study of a large, urban smart growth development in Atlanta, Georgia, provides an example of a new development with characteristics that suggest a high degree of walkability. However, observational data show pedestrians are clumped on relatively few street segments rather than distributed throughout the site, indicating it is unlikely that the site is hosting much walking between the development and its surrounds. This descriptive case study is intended to contribute to more explicit theory of how environmental design contributes to walking. Keywords urban design, walking, smart growth, public health, new urbanism The impact of environmental design on physical activity is a heavily studied area across a variety of disciplines, including environmental psychology, public health, and urban and regional planning. Such intense research activity is well 1Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta 2University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Corresponding Author: Julie Brand Zook, Georgia Institute of Technology, 247 Fourth Street, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA Email: [email protected] Downloaded from eab.sagepub.com at UNIV OF PENNSYLVANIA on March 3, 2012 Zook et al. 217 justified by the ongoing obesity epidemic, with an alarming two thirds of American adults being overweight or obese (Trust for America’s Health; Levi, Vinter, St. Laurent, & Segal, 2010). Researchers focused on the obesity epi- demic note that human physiology has not changed: human environments have, especially in terms of increased food availability and the promotion of physical inactivity (Hill & Peters, 1998). The federal government-issued “Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans” suggest that for adults a minimum of 2.5 hr of moderate physical activity (e.g., walking) per week, which is equivalent to 30 min a day, 5 days a week (e.g., roughly 2 miles of brisk walk- ing 5 days a week; Physical Activity Guidelines Advisory Committee, 2008). Slightly less than one third of Americans report that they achieve the recom- mended levels, whereas a little more than one third reports notching virtually no physical activity at all (CDC, 2005). The physical environment is widely understood as having the capacity to support active living and, inversely, to promote inactivity (Sallis, 2009). This article is focused on opportunities for physical activity, namely, walking, and how such opportunities are realized in a smart growth development in Atlanta, Georgia. This descriptive case study is intended to contribute to more explicit theory of how site design contributes to walking. Researchers in environmental psychology and public health have introduced a number of concepts and metrics to the study of walking and physical activity, including a number of audit tools that evaluate path segment attributes. For these, path segments are typically scored for numerous building and streetscape features, such as sidewalk size and condition, building setbacks, nearby land use, and the presence of various amenities and attributes from lighting to benches to curb cuts to bad smells (e.g., Day, Boarnet, Alfonso, & Forsyth, 2006; Clifton, Livi Smith, & Rodriguez, 2007; Pikora et al., 2002). The many variables assessed by these tools are often aggregated into higher-order neigh- borhood dimensions, such as safety and aesthetics, or are used to characterize general entities, such as sidewalks or land use. Many of these tools have been tested for reliability, especially interrater reliability. However, to the authors’ knowledge, only the Irvine-Minnesota Inventory has undergone a validation study for relationships to actual exercise behavior (Boarnet, Forsyth, Day, & Oakes, 2011). Planning research has emphasized fewer variables and was originally more interested in walking as an alternative to vehicle travel than as a direct source of health benefits (Sallis, 2009). Nonetheless, an increasing number of studies directly address walking. The literature has become numerous enough to sup- port a recent meta-analysis by Ewing and Cervero (2010). This meta-analysis provided evidence of links between the propensity to walk and intersection Downloaded from eab.sagepub.com at UNIV OF PENNSYLVANIA on March 3, 2012 218 Environment and Behavior 44(2) density and jobs-housing balance, among other variables. The meta-analysis was undertaken within a framework of “Ds,” the first three of which were introduced in 1997 (Cervero & Kockelman, 1997) and were subsequently added to as travel behavior became the most studied area in planning research (Ewing, Bartholomew, Winkelman, Walters, & Chen, 2008). The Ds are density, [land use] diversity, design (including both street connectivity and microscale features), destination accessibility, distance to transit, and demand management (i.e., parking supply and cost of parking; Ewing & Cervero, 2010). The Ds show demonstrated associations with travel behavior, albeit with periodic reshuffling of which variables, which operationalizations of variables, or which combinations of variables most account for which aspects of travel behavior. Such an approach is exemplary in methodologic rigor but tends not to provide detailed accounts of the decision to walk and decisions regarding which path to follow. The focus of this case study is design, the third D among the planning variables, which encompasses both path attributes and street network attributes. In spite of the research activity to date, one is still hard-pressed to find clear, evidence-based rules-of-thumb for urban and site designs that promote walking sufficient to accrue health benefits. One reason for this is that design features are difficult to measure and difficult to prioritize and have been defined by a range of attributes and objects (Ewing et al., 2008), from street network con- nectivity to cracks in the sidewalk. A second reason is that the physical activity impacts of microscale design features and larger-scale urban attributes are not always distinguishable (Ewing et al., 2008). We also describe an additional issue contributing to the lack of clarity about how urban and site design can support walking: the generally poor distinction between environments pos- sessed of urban liveliness at a local level and those offering support for con- tinuous movement over a distance. Relatively few studies have addressed themselves to the description and measurement of local-to-global relationships, though such relationships con- stitute the potential to walk a substantial distance and duration. For example, if the concern is overall intelligibility of the path network, then path segment attribute tools do little to clarify overall path choice because they assess the walkability potential of path segments as discrete entities. Pedestrians do not usually choose routes by traversing a path segment, at the end of which they choose the next path segment based on the amenities that appear on and along- side it. If the concern is walking a distance, then path segment attribute tools are not a sufficient metric as currently constituted. Certain planning measures indirectly capture aspects of local-to-global relationships. Some of these have been associated with increased walking rates, including distances to key land uses or transit (Moudon et al., 2006), Downloaded from eab.sagepub.com at UNIV OF PENNSYLVANIA on March 3, 2012 Zook et al. 219 measures of route directness (the ratio of actual distances to as-the-crow flies distances; Hess, Moudon, Snyder, & Stanilov, 1999), and other measures of connectivity, such as block sizes or intersection density (Frank, Schmid, Sallis, Chapman, & Saelens, 2005; Moudon et al., 2006). Space syntax research methodologies address themselves directly to local- to-global relationships (Hillier & Hanson, 1984) and have been used to examine the likelihood