Change in the built environment: A descriptive analysis of six u.s. cities

Since the mid-1990s there has been a resurging interest in modifying the built environment to support healthier lifestyles. However, limited literature quantifies the amount and type of changes that are occurring in the built environment. Even less is known about whether changes are occurring equally across neighborhoods, to reduce health disparities, or unequally across neighborhoods, deepening health disparities. This research aims to identify changes in multiple features of the built environment during a 10 year period (2000-2010) in a sample of neighborhoods (defined by census tract) from six different U.S. cities (Los Angeles, CA; Chicago, IL; Baltimore, MD; St. Paul, MN; Forsyth County, NC; and New York, NY). This research will also investigate neighborhood socio-demographic predictors of change, addressing important unanswered questions about the role of the built environment in reducing, maintaining, or even worsening health disparities. Neighborhoods will be characterized using direct assessment of land use, transit, and road characteristics from each municipality and commercially available business listings linked to 2000 census tracts using Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Descriptive statistics will include neighborhood built environment characteristics at baseline (2000) and change per five years in these built environment metrics. Socio-demographic data for each neighborhood will be collected from Census 2000 and American Community Survey (ACS) 2005-2009. Multilevel regression models will assess associations of initial levels of and change in neighborhood socio-demographic factors with change in the neighborhood built environment. Small-scale spatial patterns of neighborhood change will be mapped and assessed within each city using techniques of spatial statistics.