Effects Of Street Walkability On Cardiovascular Health Of Elderly People In Winter Cities

The process of population aging and urbanization has led to the prevalence of cardiovascular disease in various regions of China.As a high-risk group of cardiovascular disease,the elderly patients with cardiovascular disease have brought serious health and economic burden.Cardiovascular disease is related to genetic,environmental and other factors.Considering that the genetic factors of cardiovascular diseases cannot be changed in a short period of time,the influence of built environment on cardiovascular health has attracted increasing attention.In a variety of built environment fields,scholars at home and abroad have gradually found that street environment is related to health indicators such as walking,physical activity and body mass index of elderly residents,and has a certain influence on cardiovascular health risk.It is of great significance to determine which elements of street space affect cardiovascular health of the elderly and to provide corresponding planning and optimization suggestions.This article focuses on the street walkability and cardiovascular health of the elderly in Harbin,a typical winter city.Based on the existing research,we select several districts of Harbin locomotive street to collect data from two levels,namely individual level and street level.The individual level focus on the age,gender,level of education,smoking,lack of physical activity,obesity,high blood pressure,diabetes,dyslipidemia,and ideal cardiovascular health risk level,stroke risk level of the elderly.A total of 814 elderly samples were included.The street level focus on service level,design quality and disorder level of the street,and the data includes road network data,street image data,POI data,etc.Through data processing and quantification,a binary logistic regression model and a linear regression model were constructed to explore the correlation between cardiovascular health of the elderly and various factors of street walkability.The results showed that the cardiovascular health of the elderly could be affected by different street level indicators,including the intersection density,road network density,functional mixing degree,health food store density,unhealthy food store density,park square density and medical service facilities density at the level of street service,street green visibility,sky width,relative walking width,street aspect ratio and influence of motorized traffic at the level of street space quality,road disorder degree and environmental afforestation disorder degree at the level of street space disorder.Among them,the adverse factors of cardiovascular health in the elderly include: intersection density,unhealthy food store density,influence of motorized traffic,road disorder degree and environmental afforestation disorder degree.The protection factors include: park square density,medical service facilities density,street green visibility,sky width and relative walking width.The effects of functional mixing degree,road network density,health food store density,and street aspect ratio on cardiovascular health in the elderly are controversial.In addition,the findings suggest that street walkability in winter cities has different effects on cardiovascular health.It is mainly manifested in three aspects.First of all,there are individual differences.Elderly people with lower education level,smoking and elderly people with family genetic history are the susceptible groups of cardiovascular health effects of street walkability.The second is the difference of walking buffers at different scales,with the enlargement of the walking buffer scale,the influence of street walkability on the cardiovascular health of the elderly gradually decreased.Only a few macroscopical street walkability indexes under the 15-minute walking buffer scale could affect the cardiovascular health of the elderly.The last is the difference of walkability indexes at different levels,street walkability indexes at macro level in winter cities have a greater impact on cardiovascular health of the elderly.According to the above research results,some suggestions are put forward to improve the cardiovascular health of the elderly and promote the urban health.