Objective: This study aims to analyze research methodologies from 157 research articles published in this journal in the last five years (2016–2020). Background: Health environments research is comprised of research covering many topics and from various disciplines worldwide. No systematic study exists to uncover themes in evidence-based design (EBD) research concerning the types of research published, people engaged in research, and the research methods employed. Understanding the nature of health environment research performed can help researchers, practitioners, and students situate their work within an EBD research structure. Methods: Case study research was used to analyze 157 articles published in the Health Environments Research & Design Journal devoted to EBD and research. Secondary data were extracted to capture research methods from health environments studies and then analyzed to identify themes. The design and outcome categories were structured around and the Center for Health Design’s (CHD) Knowledge Repository with origins to Ulrich et al.’s Evidence-Based Design Framework. Results: Findings are reported on categories commonly found in empirical research articles: (i) key words, (ii) disciplines from authors, (iii) settings studied, (iv) populations studied or sampled, (v) research approach and study design, (vi) research strategies, (vii) data collection methods, (viii) data analysis procedures, (ix) design categories and variables, and (x) outcome categories and variables. Conclusions: The analyses highlighted the research methods most frequently used in health environments research. Findings revealed several inconsistencies across articles on key words and the framing of research methodologies. Results suggest that there should be a consistent and overarching research taxonomy with a set of acceptable terms for effective literature searches.

The impacts of global climate change on food systems will be broad, complex, and profoundly affected by urban context. Food-related urbanism has been investigated for decades to explore how food access influences placemaking and urban forms. With global climate change, foodscapes within urban spaces are an important consideration in urban design and planning for food security and community health. The distribution of catering businesses (restaurants and cafés), one critical method of access to food, is highly associated with urban spaces because of their high impact on diet patterns, human physical activities, travel behaviors, and the use of public spaces. This research explores the spatial associations that exist between the distribution of catering businesses and the design and planning of urban spaces in London. This quantitative research includes three parts: (1) uses Open Street Map data and the GIS spatial analysis method to study the distribution of catering businesses; (2) uses the imagery segmentation method in machine learning to categorize urban spaces into open, landscape, and conflict spaces; and (3) establishes the association between the distribution of catering businesses and the categories of urban spaces through Spearman’s correlation and a linear regression model. The results indicate that the spatial distributions of catering businesses are highly correlated with urban spaces. Conflict and landscape spaces have a significant positive influence on the distribution of catering businesses, while open space has a significant negative influence. Based on the context of global climate change, this research contributes a quantitative urban design and planning approach to promote access to food increase food options and advocate active lifestyles.