Research: Walkable areas can promote activity, good health

People who live in a neighborhood with features such as sidewalks, a park, coffee shops, restaurants and access to public transportation are likely going to be more active than if they lived somewhere without them.

That’s because those features are signs of a walkable neighborhood — and walkable neighborhoods are associated with increased activity level, according to a new twin study led by a researcher at Washington State University.

The research, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, isn’t the first to show a connection between walkability and activity level.

What it does do, said lead author Glen Duncan, is demonstrate that those associations remain even when comparing people with the same genetics and a similar upbringing.

“ We can improve health outcomes in the population,” Duncan said. “That’s a really good thing for public health.”

The research, which looked at almost 11,000 twins, showed that every 1% increase in walkability was associated with a 0.42% increase in neighborhood walking.

Walkability requires a certain amount of density, Duncan said. Neighborhoods with higher population density and more intersections were rated more walkable than those with fewer.

“So think of streets and sidewalks that are laid out in a grid-like fashion versus a cul-de-sac,” Duncan said.

The study also accounted for business density when measuring walkability.

For a neighborhood to be walkable, it requires the physical infrastructure to make walking safe, and places for people to walk to, Duncan said. One example he likes to use is the Capitol Hill neighborhood in Seattle.

“ There’s a lot of coffee shops. There’s a lot of bars. There’s a lot of pubs. There’s a lot of restaurants,” he said.

Another important part of walkability is access to public transportation, Duncan said, so people have reliable options to go places farther afield without taking their car.

“Spokane,  I think, is a good example where there’s been a concerted effort to increase public transportation,” he said. “They put in rapid bus lines. There are bike lanes in the downtown area.”

That’s important information for public health experts, policymakers and urban planners, Duncan said. If communities can build their neighborhoods to be more walkable, it could go a long way to encourage behavior that makes people healthier.

“That’s exactly what I would hope,” Duncan said. “That those who are designing the cities and towns will see this information and try to make decisions on how best to either change existing neighborhoods or build better neighborhoods.”

However, not everyone is easily sold on the idea that the density needed to create a walkable neighborhood is a good thing, said Randall Teal, head of the Architecture program at the University of Idaho.

People sometimes worry that density will ruin the towns they love. He saw those concerns arise while working on a project in Eugene, Ore.

“The comments were like, ‘I don’t want to live in New York City. I live here for a reason,’ ” he said.

However, Teal said, a neighborhood doesn’t have to turn into a mini-New York City to be walkable. There also are different ways to create walkability, Teal said. Just having something new to look at as you walk helps.

“It doesn’t need to be a shop, it could just be a different tree every 30 feet,” he said. “ Maybe within that street development, thinking about some public amenities like pocket parks.”

How people think about walkability can also change their feelings on it, Teal said.

When walkability is thought of in terms of creating connection to one’s community, people get excited, he said. People don’t always think they want density, he said, but they do often want more connection to their community.

“But in essence,” Teal said, “it’s the same thing.”

Even though congestion is often thought of as a bad thing, Teal said, it can have value within neighborhood design.

“When you start to concentrate lots of different types of people, different types of businesses, different types of activities, all close to each other, they all benefit,” Teal said. “You need to be able to see what you’re walking to. And you also need to have stimuli along the way.”

Teal said many cities and towns also are moving away from zoning that limits developments to single-family homes, and allowing for a greater diversity of housing types such as apartments or townhouses, as well as accessory dwelling units, or ADUs.

Allowing more types of housing can increase the proximity of people to each other, and help support small businesses within a walkable distance, he said.

Mixed use zoning also has the potential to allow for more interesting neighborhoods that people want to explore, Teal said.

He noted his own mother, who used to live in a suburb before retiring to Eugene, where she had many places she could walk to from her home.

“I don’t think it even crossed her mind that this would be a kind of a viable state of existence,” he said. “But now that she’s there, she loves going out of the coffee shop, she loves walking over to her singing group. She loves walking over to the little movie theater.”

A neighborhood being delightful, and not just functional, is important for walkability, Teal said. He notes an early Roman architect named Marcus Vitruvius, who had an idea that buildings should have three things: strength, utility and beauty — or, as Teal conceptualizes it, delight.

“You kind of have to deal with those (first two) things, but you don’t have to deal with delight.” But yet, Teal said, “(what) would really make walkability something that people would desire would be that it would be delightful. That you would love to do it.”

When neighborhoods have “layers of interest built into them,” Teal said, people naturally want to walk more. And they may get a little healthier in the process.

Sun may be contacted at rsun@lmtribune.com or on Twitter at @Rachel_M_Sun. This report is made in partnership with Northwest Public Broadcasting, the Lewiston Tribune and the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.