Green Walkability and Physical Activity in UK Biobank: A Cross-Sectional Analysis of Adults in Greater London

Abstract

Urban greenspace provides opportunities for outdoor exercise and may increase physical activity, with accompanying health benefits. Areas suitable for walking (walkability) are also associated with increased physical activity, but interactions with greenspace are poorly understood. We investigated associations of walkability and green walkability with physical activity in an urban adult cohort. We used cross-sectional data from Greater London UK Biobank participants (n = 57,726) and assessed walkability along roads and footpaths within 1000 m of their residential addresses. Additionally, we assessed green walkability by integrating trees and low-lying vegetation into the walkability index. Physical activity outcomes included self-reported and accelerometer-measured physical activity and active transport. We assessed associations using log-linear, logistic and linear regression models, adjusted for individual- and area-level confounders. Higher green walkability was associated with favourable International Physical Activity Questionnaire responses and achievement of weekly UK government physical activity guideline recommendations. Participants living in the highest versus lowest quintile of green walkability participated in 2.41 min (95% confidence intervals: 0.22, 4.60) additional minutes of moderate-and-vigorous physical activity per day. Higher walkability and green walkability scores were also associated with choosing active transport modes such as walking and cycling. Our green walkability approach demonstrates the utility in accounting for walkability and greenspace simultaneously to understand the role of the built environment on physical activity.

Time Spent Outdoors and Associations with Sleep, Optimism, Happiness and Health before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Austria

“…Participants living in rural areas reported spending more time outdoors than those living in urban areas, in both of our surveys. Spending time outdoors in a natural environment can improve health and wellbeing [ 33 ], and those living in cities spend more time doing physical activities if they live near urban green spaces [ 34 ]. Additionally, a longitudinal study conducted during COVID-19 stay-at-home orders (n = 20,012) found that spending time outdoors in nature and undertaking physical activity both significantly reduced depression and anxiety scores.…”

Walkability Indicators in the Aftermath of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Systematic Review

“…In terms of documents (Figure 16), the node with the greatest size, and thus the most popular among recent walkability indicator studies, is Duncan et al's work [61], which validates the Walk Score ® [62] for estimating neighborhood walkability in 4 USA cities. [26][27][28][63][64][65][66]. Another topic of general interest for Public Health is people's physical health, manifested through obesity, overweight and frailty, and generally calculated using the Body Mass Index (BMI) or Waist Circumference (WC) [67][68][69][70][71].…”

“…Fewer works developed and implemented their own indicators. The new indicators that were identified during the research are: the Dutch Walkability Index [120] and the Japanese Walkability Index [112], both falling under the Transportation category; the Walkability Index for London [63], used to measure the relationship between green spaces and physical activity; and the School Walkability Index [121] applied to understand walkability associations with active commuting to school (ACS).…”

“…Moreover, most works rely on traditional methods to obtain the data for the phenomena being associated with walkability indicators. Across the different subjects of analysis, data collection for physical activity, health condition or travelling patterns is mostly done through the application of questionnaires and surveys [26,27,30,42,63,71,77,79,[81][82][83]92,107,109,120,122], or pedometers/accelerometers [26,28,66,112]. The collection of this data is costly, not easily updated and difficult to scale [127].…”

Invited Perspective: Studying Walkability and Cancer Incidence—A Step in the Right Direction

“… 13 , 14 Some measures have been added into studies to account for these complexities, such as the incorporation of vegetation data to assess “green walkability” and integration of perceived walkability measures that additionally draw on subjective assessments of traffic and crime safety levels. 15 , 16 An ongoing challenge of walkability exposure assessment is the lack of data that enable parameterization of each component of walkability, with the spatial and temporal range to support prospective study designs. In the context of cancer epidemiology, assessing walkability exposure over etiologically relevant time windows (e.g., decades) requires historical data sets.…”