A Hotspot of Walking in and around the Central Business District: Leveraging Coarsely Geocoded Routinely Collected Data

Abstract

A growing literature is pointing towards the prevalence of healthy lifestyles, such asadequate walking, in the Central Business District (CBD) of many cities. However,only one study has investigated the presence of walking hotpsots. Using coarselygeocoded, routinely collected survey data from the Australian Capital Territory(ACT), and a unique‘overlap of spatial clusters’approach, we investigated if a) Therewere patterns of clustering in walking behaviours, b) If these clusters were co-locatedand therefore associated with various built environment characteristics and c) What thedemographic and active transport use profiles of the residents of these clusters were. Ahotspot of walking was found in the CBD of the ACT,co-locatedwith hotspots orspatial clusters of dwelling density, public transport frequency and destination accessi-bility. Residents of the hotspot walked approximately an hour more than the averageACT resident and had significantly higher odds of using active transport to workplacesrelative to driving. Odds ratios of walking relative to driving to work were 9.20 (5.97,14.18) and bicycling were 3.54 (1.87, 6.69) in the walking hotspot compared to non-hotspots. Policies directed towards creating a‘CBD like’built environment in variouslocations of cities or refurbishing and redesigning existing CBDs to make them moreliveable helps encourage walking behaviors. In addition coarsely geocoded, freelyavailable routinely collected survey data can be used to investigate relationships thatmay help drive policy. Show more