What’s this about?
The Built Environment & Health (BEH) project is an interdisciplinary program of research at Columbia University. Led by epidemiologist Andrew Rundle, BEH uses spatial data to examine the implications of the built environment, including land use, public transit, and housing, for physical activity, diet, obesity, and other aspects of health. With a focus on New York City, BEH research will inform public policy to promote health in the city and metropolitan area. BEH is affiliated with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholars program at Columbia.
Research Articles
Research Briefs, Seed Grants, Working Groups, White Papers
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BEH Publications, 2008
BEH studies published or accepted for publication this year include “Immigration, acculturation and body mass index in New York City: The roles of personal and neighborhood characteristics,” “Children living in areas with more street trees have lower asthma prevalence,” and “Individual or neighborhood disadvantage modifies the association between neighborhood walkability and body mass index.”
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Zoning Change in New York City
Advocates for New Urbanism or “active living” often identify zoning as a policy strategy to make cities more walkable. Because zoning regulates both building size and land use, changes in zoning can affect both population density and the availability of shops and restaurants within a walkable distance. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s sustainability plan, PlaNYC, advocates rezoning city neighborhoods to allow higher-density development near subway stops, allowing more New Yorkers to use public transit instead of private automobiles.
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Observational coding of Urban Design in New York City
The BEH group is using observational measures of urban design to validate digital measures that will be introduced into analyses that examine the association between the built environment and physical activity or obesity
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New Research on Spatial Accessibility in New York City
The BEH research group is developing a suite of new projects that examine how spatial accessibility—proximity to basic retail and services—varies across New York City neighborhoods. Spatial accessibility is significant for health because it may promote pedestrian travel.
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The Urban Built Environment and Obesity in New York City
In the BEH group’s first publication, Andrew Rundle and colleagues examine the relationship between built environment characteristics and obesity in New York City, replicating measures widely used in previous studies of other cities.
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Observational Validation of Urban Design Measures for New York City
The BEH project was recently awarded funding to develop measures of aesthetic features of urban environment in New York City. The project builds on work by urbanists such as Jane Jacobs and Kevin Lynch, who proposed that aesthetic features of urban neighborhoods promote pedestrian activity.
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Obesity, Physical Activity and Built Space in New York City
With funding from the Obesity and the Built Environment initiative of the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, the BEH group is examining the association between built environment characteristics and physical activity, diet, and body size in three samples of New York City-area residents.
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Working Group on Physical Activity, Diet, and Obesity
In the summer of 2004, the Health & Society Scholars program began a new Working Groups program to promote interdisciplinary research on population health. One of the first to be funded was the working group on physical activity, diet, and obesity.
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Neighborhood Walkability
Developing more detailed measures of walkability that are tailored for an urban environment may help solve a specific puzzle: low-income urban populations live in highly walkable environments, but they have high rates of obesity and related health problems. If low-income neighborhoods have features that discourage pedestrian activity, this may help explain disparities in physical activity, weight, and health outcomes.
