Many Pathways From Land Use To Health

"Many Pathways from Land Use to Health: Associations between Neighborhood Walkability and Active Transportation, Body Mass Index, and Air Quality" by Lawrence D. Frank, James F. Sallis, Terry L. Conway, James E. Chapman, Brian E. Saelens, and William Bachman in the Winter 2006 issue of the Journal of the American Planning Association (JAPA) evaluated the association between a single index of walkability that incorporated land use mix, street connectivity, net residential density, and retail floor area ratios, with health-related outcomes in King County, Washington.

APA has published this article (for free) on their website.

From the abstract:

"The literature shows single-use, lowdensity land development and disconnected street networks to be positively associated with auto dependence and negatively associated with walking and transit use. These factors in turn appear to affect health by influencing physical activity, obesity, and emissions of air pollutants. We evaluated the association between a single index of walkability that incorporated land use mix, street connectivity, net residential density, and retail floor area ratios, with health-related outcomes in King County, Washington. We found a 5% increase in walkability to be associated with a per capita 32.1% increase in time spent in physically active travel, a 0.23-point reduction in body mass index, 6.5% fewer vehicle miles traveled, 5.6% fewer grams of oxides of

nitrogen (NOx) emitted, and 5.5% fewer grams of volatile organic compounds (VOC) emitted. These results connect development patterns with factors that affect several prevalent chronic diseases."