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Research - Research Projects |
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Transportation and Public Health
Under the leadership of Reid Ewing, in collaboration with Center
Affiliates Kelly Clifton and Carolyn Voorhees, the Center is positioned to
become a national leader in research on the relationship between urban
form, transportation and human health.
Baltimore Active Living Teens Study
Summary of the Project:
National Center for Smart Growth associates Carolyn Voorhees and Kelly Clifton have undertaken a study of out-of-school
physical activity levels of high school students. The key questions are how much social, personal, or phsyical aspects of the
students' environments impact their levels of physical activity. This study is important due to the growing number of overweight teens
and is based on the notion that part of this trend is due to reduced physical activity amongst adolescents. Participants are being recruited
from Baltimore Polytechnic High School and Western High School. More information on the
study can be found here.
Testing Associations Between Physical Activity and the Urban Built Environment
Summary of the Project:
In partnership with Dr. Daniel A. Rodriquez at the University of North Carolina, Kelly Clifton and a team of researchers
at the University of Maryland have begun a study to determine how the urban built environment influences
the amount and types of physical activity residents engage in. The study will take place in Montgomery County, Maryland
and will involve 400 participants drawn from three distinct neighborhood types. The study participants
will be interviewed, given accelerometers, and asked to maintain a diary of their phsyical activities. In addition to determining
relative activity levels in different neighborhood types, the research will also address whether active individuals
seek out a built environment conducive to physical activity when deciding where to live. More information on the study can be found at
http://www.smartgrowth.umd.edu/pabe.htm.
Measuring the Health Effects of Sprawl
Summary of the Project:
Based on work begun at Rutgers University, Reid Ewing continues
path-breaking work on measuring the health effects of urban sprawl.
Measuring the Health Effects of Sprawl: A National Analysis of Physical
Activity, Obesity and Chronic Disease is the widely publicized new report
by Dr. Ewing and Barbara A. McCann. The report is the first national
study to show a clear association between the type of place people live
and their activity levels, weight and health. The popular version of the
report was published by Smart Growth America and the Surface
Transportation Policy Project in September 2003, while the technical
peer-reviewed article upon which the report was based was published
simultaneously in the American Journal of Health Promotion. The two
received enormous newspaper, television and radio publicity throughout
the United States and overseas and reached an estimated U.S. audience
of 50 million people.
Environmental Determinants of Physical Activity
Summary of the Project:
Reid Ewing is in the process of moving another Robert Wood
Johnson Foundation funded study from Rutgers University to the
University of Maryland.
Entitled "Identifying and Measuring Environmental Determinants
of Physical Activity," this project will develop measurement methods for
perceptual qualities of the urban environment viewed as important for
walkability such as transparency and human scale, and will incorporate these definitions into an illustrated manual suitable for lay observer
training and field assessments.
School Location and Transportation Choices
Summary of the Project:
A separate study funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency and principally written by Dr. Ewing focused on the relationship
between school location, the built environment around schools, mode
choices for trips to school, and air emissions impacts of those choices.
Released on “Walk to School Day” (October 8, 2003) by EPA
Associate Administrator Jessica L. Furey, the study found that students
will be more likely to walk or ride bicycles to school if schools are built in
proximity to where they live and if the nearby built environment is
conducive to such non-motorized travel. The study was co-authored by
William Greene of New York University.
New Street Design Guidelines and Standards
Summary of the Project:
During fall 2003, Dr. Ewing worked with the City of Charlotte,
North Carolina, on the development of new street design guidelines and
standards that balance the needs of pedestrians and bicyclists with those
of motorists. The most ambitious and well-funded project of its type, Dr.
Ewing's specific contributions included several days of workshops to
develop design elements ranging from street cross sections to pedestrian
level of service measures, preparation of traffic calming audit procedures
and case studies, and authorship of a traffic calming chapter that will
become part of Charlotte's new Roadway Design Manual.
This work may have contributed to Dr. Ewing's successful
competition as part of a national interdisciplinary team to develop new
national street guidelines for the Institute of Transportation Engineers,
Congress for the New Urbanism, and U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency. This project will commence during the spring of 2004.
A Smart Step Forward
Summary of the Project:
Center Affiliate Kelly Clifton leads the Smart Step Forward project
funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
A Smart Step Forward campaign strives to produce more walkable
environments through changes to land use codes, implementation of
demonstration projects, and community support for physical changes
that produce a more walkable environment. By encouraging more
physical activity, A Smart Step Forward seeks to address serious public
health concerns such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, asthma and
obesity.
This project was launched in 2001 by the Governor’s Office of
Smart Growth and the Maryland Department of Health and Mental
Hygiene. In 2002, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation awarded a
$150,000 two-year grant to the National Center for Smart Growth at the
University of Maryland to create pilot projects in three Maryland communities. The Smart Step Forward project has identified the
communities of Bel Air in Harford County, College Park in Prince
George’s County, and Turner’s Station in Baltimore County, to serve as
demonstration projects to show the effects of revising local codes and
ordinances to create more walkable communities.
The project includes community surveys, audits of local zoning and
subdivision codes, public workshops and implementation projects.
These three case studies will illustrate the interaction between local
codes and walkability in each community, detailed efforts to improve the
codes in the three communities, and document project successes and
challenges overall. In addition to these case studies, the final report will
also contain a “tool-kit” that synthesizes the lessons learned from the
three case studies, thus making the information relevant and
transferable to different types of communities, from very walkable to very
automobile-dependent, within Maryland and throughout the nation.
For more information, contact:
Kelly J. Clifton, Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Assistant Professor in Urban Studies and Planning.
(301) 405-1945
kclifton@eng.umd.edu
Or, visit: www.smartstepforward.org
Community Characteristics and Physical Activity Among
Adolescent Girls
Summary of the Project:
Dr. Carolyn C. Voorhees, a Center Affiliate, has been working with
the National Institutes of Health, the National Heart, Lung and Blood
Institute, Dr. Knaap and Dr. Deborah Young on a project investigating
the ways in which community characteristics can affect the level of
physical activity engaged in by adolescent girls.
Dr. Voorhees’s research will form an ancillary study to the four
year, National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute-funded multi-centered
Trial of Activity for Adolescent Girls, a group (school)-randomized
controlled intervention trial to increase physical activity among a cohort
of sixth grade girls over 2.5 years. The parent NIH-funded Trial of
Activity for Adolescent Girls study will be collecting measures of physical
activity using both self-reporting and accelerometers, small monitors
worn at the hip that record acceleration and deceleration of movement
without the need for any reporting from the participants. Using a radius
of 5 miles around each participating school in the study and around the
homes of each study participant, the study plans to gather information
documenting proximity of recreational facilities, street design, population
density, population mix (ethnic/age distribution), crime, availability of
mass transit, neighborhood socioeconomic status, geographic elevations
and topography and types of land use.
Using hierarchical linear modeling, with girls nested within
neighborhoods, while controlling for individual level factors such as race
and socioeconomic status, researchers intend to investigate the
relationship of the environment to individual physical activity. In
addition, by following girls over time, researchers plan to investigate
whether the effect of the TAAG intervention will be modified by
community characteristics.
This study will be unique in its scope of exploring the role of
community environments in physical activity across six very different
urban suburban and rural areas: San Diego, Calif., Minneapolis, Minn.,
Baltimore, Md., New Orleans, La., Tucson, Ariz., and Columbia, S.C.
Pedestrian Safety Modeling
Summary of the Project:
With support from the Highway Safety Office of the Maryland State
Highway Administration, Center Affiliate Kelly Clifton and Research
Associate Jungyul Sohn lead a project to identify areas within Prince
George’s County, Md., and the City of Baltimore where pedestrians are
exposed to the highest risk of collision with vehicular traffic.
Like most communities around the country, both Prince George’s
County and the city of Baltimore have good information on where
pedestrian-vehicular conflict exist, but have much less information
regarding the actual pedestrian risk at these locations. To identify sites
of high pedestrian risks, the Center will develop pedestrian
transportation models that will produce forecasts of pedestrian traffic.
