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Enhancing the Built Environment: An Ecological Approach

The Individual
The Social Environment
The Physical Environment
Policies and Regulations

Enhancing the Built Environment: The Individual

Strategies

You can promote active transportation at the individual level by encouraging clients, patients, members, or community members to:

Look for and use services within walking distance from home and work
Report (and ask neighbours to report) damaged sidewalks and vandalism
Shovel their sidewalks (and the sidewalks of elderly neighbours) in the winter

Enhancing the Built Environment: The Social Environment

Strategies

Try the following strategies to promote improvements to the built environment at the social level:

Advocate for improvements to the built environment at your facility/office and in your neighborhood and community. Make yourself available for consultation (e.g., stakeholder meetings, community meetings, etc.) regarding this issue. Speak with decision-makers at county, municipal, and community levels.
Organize forums and meetings that focus on walkable neighbourhoods. Invite transportation leaders, city/town planners, school administrators, and business association representatives. You may be surprised by how many people want to promote the benefits of walking.
Encourage active commuting in your workplace by advocating for flexible work schedules, workplace shower facilities, bike lock-ups, and incentives for active employees
If you are involved with schools or education, encourage active commuting for school-aged children by advocating for bike racks, organizing a “walking school bus,” enforcing no drop-off zones in front of schools, and volunteering to organize crossing guards.
Advocate for calmer streets in your home and workplace neighbourhoods. Meet with city/town enforcement officers, school administrators, and business representatives to brainstorm possible solutions and to set up implementation plans. Street calming can be achieved through lower speed limits, speed detector signs, speed bumps, and curves.

Enhancing the Built Environment: The Physical Environment

Strategies

You can support clients, patients, members, or community members by promoting improvements to the built environment at your facility/office by taking the following steps. (The same strategies can be used to improve the built environment in your residential neighbourhood, too.)

Improving “streetscaping” (i.e., improving the aesthetics of the street) in the area surrounding your facility/building. Possible ideas include planters, more trees and green spaces, street light decorations, and murals.
Conducting walkability and bikability assessments in the area surrounding your facility/building
Ensuring sidewalks leading to the facility/building have curbs cuts

Enhancing the Built Environment: Policies and Regulations

Change involves talking to the right people and creating excitement about change. You need to engage city and town planners, the transportation sector, business associations, and community leagues. Policies and regulations ensure that the built environment is considered when undertaking new building projects or altering existing structures.

Strategies

The built environment should be considered when developing policies, guidelines, and/or regulations in the following areas:

Transportation: Work with appropriate decision-makers to create an active transportation master plan for your municipality or county that ensures pedestrians and cyclists are considered with any new development and re-development (Raine et al, 2008). Make yourself available for consultation (e.g., stakeholder meetings, community meetings, etc.) regarding transportation.
Business Development: Create incentives to encourage high density business development (i.e., neighborhoods with a variety of services and businesses in close proximity to one another).
Incentives: Encourage active commuting by advocating for plans that discourage urban sprawl. Traffic taxes, subdivision fees, rush-hour tolls, and gas taxes can all help to encourage density and active commuting (Raine et al, 2008).
Inclusion Policies: Ensure workplace policies and planning documents show a commitment to accessibility and mobility issues.
Planning: Ensure workplace policies promote “smart growth” planning for the area surrounding your facility/building (e.g., mix-use, grid street system, parks and green space, etc.).

Enhancing the Built Environment: Useful Links

References

Raine, K., Spence, J. C. , Church, J., Boulé, N., Slater, L. , Marko, J., Gibbons, K. & Hemphill, E. (2008) State of the evidence review on urban health and healthy weights. Ottawa, ON: Canadian Institute of Health Initiatives.

Owen, N., Humpel, N., Leslie, E., Bauman, A. & Sallis, J. (2004). Understanding environmental influences on walking: review and research agenda. American Journal of Preventative Medicine, 24(7), 67–76.

Quick links in Creating Change section

Individual Level
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Social Environment Level
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Physical Environment Level
• Built Environment and Active Transportation
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• Natural Environment