Reid Ewing

Building Environment to Promote Health

Authors: Reid Ewing (2003)
Report
Synopsis: Editorial published in the "Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health" on the future of collaboration between public health and urban planning professionals.

 

Travel and Environmental Implications of School Siting

Authors: Reid Ewing (2003)
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Synopsis: Travel and Environmental Implications of School Siting, released by the EPA on October 8, 2003, is the first study to empirically examine the relationship between school locations, the built environment around schools, how kids get to school, and the impact on air emissions of those travel choices. Over the next few decades, communities making decisions about the construction and renovation of thousands of schools will be challenged to meet multiple goals -- educational, fiscal, and environmental. The study finds that:School proximity to students matters. Students with shorter walk and bike times to school are more likely to walk or bike. The built environment influences travel choices. Students traveling through pedestrian-friendly environments are more likely to walk or bike. Because of travel behavior differences, school location has an impact on air emissions. Centrally located schools that can be reached by walking and bicycling result in reduced air emissions from driving. More data collection and research are needed to add further to the understanding of these effects. Specifically, improved data about both school travel and the built environment as well as new modeling techniques can build on these results. For some time, there has been a trend toward construction of big schools and requirements for large sites. Guidelines, recommendations, and standards that encourage or require building large schools on new campuses or discourage renovation are embedded in a variety of state and local regulations, laws and funding formulas. This study provides important information about the effect of school location on how children get to school. It shows that school siting and design can affect choices of walking, biking, or driving. In turn, these changes in travel choices could affect traffic congestion, air pollution, and school transportation budgets.

 

Can the Physical Environment Determine Physical Activity Levels?

Authors: Reid Ewing (2005)
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Synopsis: Can the physical environment determine physical activity levels? Does your place of residence affect your level of physical activity and ultimately your weight and health? There is relatively strong evidence of association between compact development patterns and use of active travel modes such as walking and transit. There is weaker evidence of linkage between compact development, overall physical activity, and downstream weight and health effects.

 

Why We Should Care About Traffic

Authors: Reid Ewing (2006)
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Synopsis: Moving traffic efficiently is something transportation planners should know and care about, because our "customers" (the traveling public) find traffic so frustrating and because competent traffic engineers aren't always around.

 

Identifying and Measuring Urban Design Qualities Related to Walkability

Authors: Reid Ewing, Otto Clemente, Susan Handy, et al. (2005)
Report
Synopsis: In active living research, measures used to characterize the built environment have been mostly gross qualities such as neighborhood density and park access. This project has developed operational definitions and measurement protocols for subtler urban design qualities believed to be related to walkability. METHODS:  Methods included: 1) recruiting an expert panel; 2) shooting video clips of streetscapes; 3) rating urban design qualities of streetscapes by the expert panel; 4) measuring physical features of streetscapes from the video clips; 5) testing inter-rater reliability of physical measurements and urban design quality ratings; 6) statistically analyzing relationships between physical features and urban design quality ratings, 7) selecting of qualities for operationalization, and 8) developing of operational definitions and measurement protocols for urban design qualities based on statistical relationships. RESULTS:  Operational definitions and measurement protocols were developed for five of nine urban design qualities: imageability, visual enclosure, human scale, transparency, and complexity. CONCLUSIONS:   A field survey instrument has been developed, tested in the field, and further refined for use in active living research.

 

Comparing Forecasting Methods: Expert Land Use Panel vs. Simple Land use Allocation Model

Authors: Reid Ewing and Richard J. Kuzmyak (2005)
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Synopsis: An Expert Land Use Panel was used to forecast the land use impacts of a major highway project in the Washington, DC area, the Inter-County Connector. What makes this panel noteworthy is the fact that a subgroup of panelists, convinced that the accessibility impacts of the highway were not being adequately considered by the majority, developed a simple land use allocation model which they then used to produce independent forecasts. This allows us to compare more intuitive and ad hoc forecasts based only on expert opinion with those based on a formal land use allocation model. At least in this case, the two differed sufficiently to suggest that the two processes are not mere substitutes for one another. This prompts us to recommend that subsequent panels be fed accessibility data early in the process to inform their intuitive judgments, and that simple land use allocation models be considered as a complement to expert opinion.

 

Relationship Between Urban Sprawl and Physical Activity, Obesity, and Morbidity

Authors: Reid Ewing, Tom Schmid, Richard Killingsworth, et al. (2003)
Report
Synopsis: Purpose. To determine the relationship between urban sprawl, health, and health-related behaviors.Design. Cross-sectional analysis using hierarchical modeling to relate characteristics of individuals and places to levels of physical activity, obesity, body mass index (BMI), hypertension, diabetes, and coronary heart disease.Setting. U.S. counties (448) and metropolitan areas (83).Subjects. Adults (n 5 206,992) from pooled 1998, 1999, and 2000 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS).Measures. Sprawl indices, derived with principal components analysis from census and other data, served as independent variables. Self-reported behavior and health status from BRFSS served as dependent variables.Results. After controlling for demographic and behavioral covariates, the county sprawl index had small but significant associations with minutes walked (p 5 .004), obesity (p , .001), BMI (p 5 .005), and hypertension (p 5 .018). Residents of sprawling counties were likely to walk less during leisure time, weigh more, and have greater prevalence of hypertension than residents of compact counties. At the metropolitan level, sprawl was similarly associated with minutes walked (p 5 .04) but not with the other variables.Conclusion. This ecologic study reveals that urban form could be significantly associated with some forms of physical activity and some health outcomes. More research is needed to refine measures of urban form, improve measures of physical activity, and control for other individual and environmental influences on physical activity, obesity, and related health outcomes. (Am J Health Promot 2003;18[1]:47–57.)

 

Measuring the Health Effects of Sprawl: A National Analysis of Physical Activity, Obesity and Chronic Disease

Authors: Reid Ewing and Barbara McCann (2003)
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Synopsis: The findings presented here are from the article, Relationship Between Urban Sprawl and Physical Activity, Obesity and Morbidity, by Reid Ewing, Tom Schmid, Richard Killingsworth, Amy Zlot, and Stephen Raudenbush, published in the September 2003 issue of the American Journal of Health Promotion. This report is intended to make this important piece of research more accessible to the general public. In addition to presenting research findings, this report summarizes recent research done by others on the links between the way we’ve built our communities, physical activity, and health. It also includes recommendations for change and resources for those interested in further exploration of this topic.

 

Neighborhood Schools and Sidewalk Connections: What Are the Impacts on Travel Mode Choice and Vehicle Emissions

Authors: Reid Ewing, Christopher V. Forinash, and William Schroeer (2005)
Report
Synopsis: The study reported here was the first to examine the relationship between school location, the built environment around schools, student travel to school, and the emissions impacts of this travel. Students with shorter walk and bike times to school proved significantly more likely to walk or bike—which argues for neighborhood schools. Students who have access to sidewalks along main roads were also more likely to walk—which argues for improvements in sidewalk networks. Neighborhood schools that can be reached by walking and biking can increase the amount of walking and biking to school, can shorten trip distances,and can reduce motor vehicle emissions significantly.

 

Traffic Calming Practice Revisited

Authors: Reid Ewing, Steven J. Brown, and Aaron Hoyt (2005)
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Synopsis: Since the Publication of ITE's "Traffic Calming: State of the Practice," the field of traffic calming has matured. This feature summarizes a 2004 survey of traffic calming practices in 21 leading jurisdictions. The results are compared to surveys conducted for the national report in the 1990s.

 

Turning Highways into Main Streets: Two Innovations in Planning Methodology

Authors: Reid Ewing, Michael R. King, Stephen Raudenbush, and Otto Jose Clemente (2005)
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Synopsis: Visual preference surveys have become a popular tool among planning practitioners. By tapping visual media, such surveys help to illustrate physical design alternatives in ways that words, maps, and other media cannot. They have found applications in visioning projects, design charrettes, and other physical planning activities with heavy public involvement. With little additional effort, a visual preference survey can be restructured as a visual assessment study, which provides more useful information. Confounding variables can be controlled, and underlying qualities that cause certain scenes to be preferred can be identified. This article reports on a visual assessment study of state highways, identifying the physical features that can make them into main streets.

 

Measuring Urban Design Qualities: An Illustrated Field Manual

Authors: Reid Ewing, Otto Clemente, Susan Handy, et al. (2005)
Report
Synopsis: This manual is the product of nearly a year and a half of research on urban design qualities related to walkability. It builds on a growing body of evidence that links the built environment to active living.This manual will provide a qualitative introduction to several key urban design qualities from the urban design literature, and then will provide guidance on how to objectively measure each quality for a typical street.