Impact Of Community Built Environment On Individual Health

Most cities in the Western countries have completed the process of urbanization,and suffered many "urban diseases",such as urban sprawl,high dependence on private vehicles,transportation congestion.Because of these possible reasons,residents have faced serious obesity problem,for example,more than 60 percent adults in America were overweight at 2012.In addition,there is an increasing number of people who lead an inactive lifestyle,and have extremely insufficient exercises.With the rapid growth of economy and urbanization,above-mentioned problems are appearing in China,especially in big cities.The overweight rate of Chinese adults was 22.8%at 2002 and increased quickly to 30.1%at 2012 and the morbidity of hypertension and diabetes is also high,so some problems about health have affected people's lives.However,the research about the relationship between the built environment and health was at the early stage in China and cannot provide empirical evidence.Besides,the influence paths between built environment and health were also insufficient.Based on previous literatures related to the built environmental impacts on travel behavior,BMI/overweight and exercise behavior,this research uses the data of CFPS and investigates the influence of built environment on individual BMI/overweight and exercise behavior.The result proves that high density could encourage people to walk or cycle to workplace and have lower BMI,while the total and direct effects of the built environment on individual BMI/overweight are positive,which is contrary to Western countries' results.We believe that the possible reason is that people who live in a community with high population density and facilities accessibility may need short travel distance and less energy consumption,so they have higher BMI.As for exercise,it is the exercise facilities per capital rather than the density of exercise facilities which is associated with time for exercises and frequency of exercises.Besides,the crime rate and the exercise facilities per capital are two mediate variables between population density/facilities accessibility and exercise behavior.Based on these results,governments should improve the pedestrian environment,walkability and encourage people to use active transport.At the same time,government should implement different policies according to the population density.In dense communities,the residents' demand of exercise facilities should be satisfied,while in low density communities,the government should make effort to minimize the crime events.In addition,air quality and environment should be improved to remove the obstacle of exercises.