Research On Walking Supportive Environment From The Perspective Of Active Health Intervention

The built environment and the population health are eternal topics of concern for the development of human society.Since the economic reform and opening up,China has undergone a process of rapid urbanization,with the urbanization rate rising from17.92% in 1978 to over 60% in 2019.While rapid urbanization has brought about great economic and social achievements,it is also accompanied by a series of rapid construction’s impact on population health,such as a fast-paced,high-intensity modern life and lacking physical activity in a working environment,which leads to overweight,obesity and other chronic diseases.Many studies in the medical field have shown that there is a close relationship between physical activity and health.Appropriate increase in physical activity can help reduce the incidence and mortality of certain diseases.However,how the space environment affects physical activities and the performance of health interventions in the space environment need to be further studied and measured.As an important space site for residents’ daily life,walking environment is closely related to residents’ daily physical activities and can effectively affect residents’ health.Based on this,this article mainly focused on the health problems caused by lack of physical exercises and attempt to intervene in residents’ walking activities through the walking environment to increase the daily physical activity of residents,and ultimately achieve the aim of improving residents’ health.The dissertation is organized as three parts: The first part is the literature review of research backgrounds and related theoretical basis.It mainly introduces the origin and related backgrounds of this study and attempts to construct a walk-supporting environment theoretical framework that actively interferes with residents’ health for the further theoretical and empirical analysis of the dissertation.The second part is the analysis of active health intervention in the walking supportive environment,discussing"the connection between walking activities and resident’s’ health","the behavior and spatial preference of residents walking activities","the health intervention mechanism of walking supportive environment" and " "the spatial performance of active health intervention in walking environment" and so on.The third part is the space optimization and construction of the walking supportive environment.Based on the results of the previous part,the author tries to put forward the principles,contents and strategies of the space optimization of the walking supportive environment.Finally,summarize the characteristics of the space elements of the walking supportive environment and its interaction mechanism,and look forward to the construction of a walking supportive environment in the future.This dissertation employed a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods,including experimental measurements,spatial mathematical statistics,behavioral annotations,questionnaires and in-depth interviews,etc.,and discussed the topics of "the correlation between residents’ walking activities and the health status","the healthy mechanism of the supportive environment" and "the healthy space performance of the walking environment".Based on these,the study aimed to provide a spatial optimization strategy of the walking environment in the community.The study found that:(1)the amount of walking activity of residents is significantly negatively correlated with their physical health status.The number of daily walking exercise steps can affect the status of residents’ BMI indicators.It is appealed to residents to increase walking activities in their daily lives;(2)the walking supportive environment affected the health of residents through walking activities.The walking environment can directly affect the health of residents through environmental elements,but it mainly influenced the health of residents through the intensity and breadth of walking activities.Walking activities played a significant mediating role in the process of active health intervention in the walking supportive environment.Among them,connectivity factors,convenience factors,functional service factors and environmental quality factors were important influencing factors;(3)the degree of walking environment intervention can better measure the spatial performance of the walking supportive environment on the residents’ health intervention.The walking environment intervened the residents’ walking activity through spatial elements to achieve the aim of promoting the spatial health performance.The high degree of road network density,the good road connection,the rich land use mixed state,high level of service facilities and comfortable walking environment support residents’ health largely.Future land and space planning need to pay more attention to residents’ daily physical activity needs,and design their 5-minute,10-minute,and 15-minute living circles to create a community walking environment that supports residents’ physical activities.The overarching contribution of this dissertation is:(1)to supplement and perfect the theoretical connotation of active health intervention.This research focused on physical activities,further consolidated the theoretical connotation of "active health intervention",examined the behavior and space demand laws of the walking environment and residents’ health,and provided a new perspective and new path for the research on the built environment and population health.(2)to propose a conceptual model of a walking supportive environment.Based on the perspective of the correlation between physical activities and health status,this research explored the health intervention mechanism of walking environment on residents’ physical activity from the intensity of walking activity and the breadth of walking activity.The results found that high road network density,good road connections,diverse land use types,complete service facilities,and a comfortable walking environment can help improve residents’ travel by foot and promote health through increased physical activities.(3)to translate the amount of physical activity into space through walking activities,and to measure the spatial performance of active health intervention in walking environment.Utilizing the intensity and breadth of walking environment to comprehensively analyze the effects of health intervention on residents’ physical activities.On these results,this research aimed to put forward corresponding planning and design suggestions to provide decisionmaking basis for the planning and construction of healthy cities and communities.