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Quality of Public Open Spaces and Recreational Walking
Takemi Sugiyama1, Lucy D Gunn1, Hayley Christian1
1Takemi Sugiyama is with the Centre for Design Innovation, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Lucy D. Gunn and Billie Giles-Corti are with the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Hayley Christian is with the School of Population Health, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia. Jacinta Francis, Sarah Foster, and Paula Hooper are with the School of Earth and Environment, University of Western Australia. Neville Owen is with the Behavioural Epidemiology Laboratory, Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Objectives:
We examined associations between specific public open space (POS) attributes and recreational walking to local POS.
Methods:
Between October 2004 and December 2006, 1465 adults of the RESIDential Environments Project, conducted in Perth, Australia, reported whether they walk to a POS for recreation. For each participant, we identified all open spaces larger than 0.8 hectares within 1.6 kilometers from home. On the basis of field audit data, we created 3 scores (presence, count, size-weighted presence) for 19 specific open space attributes.
Results:
With logistic regression analyses, we found that walking to a POS was associated with the presence of gardens, grassed areas, walking paths, water features, wildlife, amenities, dog-related facilities, and off-leash areas for dogs. It was also associated with the highest number of these attributes in a single open space, but not with the total number of attributes in all POSs within 1.6 kilometers of home.
Conclusions:
Building 1 high-quality local park may be more effective in promoting recreational walking than is providing many average-quality parks.
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