SHAPING BUILT ENVIRONMENTS FOR COMMUNITY HEALTH: A qualitative exploration of active transport by walking

Community health focuses on strategies to maintain, protect and improve the health of population groups and communities. The ways environmental, social and economic resources are deployed to sustain and enhance individual wellbeing has been a growing concern for a number of years. Because individual behaviours are transactional in nature with the environment, there are repeating cycles of reciprocal or mutual influence between an individual and the surrounding environments. The importance of the effect of the individual and social environment on health behaviour is well researched; however, the significance of the complexity of the built environment and its impact on individual behaviour is adding to a more comprehensive picture. This chapter builds on research paradigms from fields such as urban planning and public health to better understand how the built environment shapes healthier and more livable communities. We use repeated interviews and an ecological momentary assessment (EMA) approach to explore how a group of 13 young active transporters negotiate their urban space and in doing so explore a range of individual-environmental transactions. A range of environmental stressors were also described by participants. These included environmental incivilities and features that constrained their defensible space. In particular, traffic pollution, safety concerns, crowds and congestion, combined with feelings of emptiness acted as liabilities for active transport by walking (ATW). This chapter concludes by describing the extent to which the environment was perceived as controllable, predictable, aesthetically inviting, with low levels of hostility in relation to noise and distraction were presented by the young people in the study as important resources or assets for ATW.