Graduation Semester and Year

2021

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Urban Planning and Public Policy

Department

Urban and Public Affairs

First Advisor

Ardeshir Anjomani

Abstract

The relationship between the built environment and health outcomes, including obesity, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, asthma, and heart diseases, has been significantly related (Chandrabose et al., 2019). Urban planning plays a significant role in shaping the built environment of cities that are affecting public health. Historically, urban planning and public health are connected due to the impact of the built environment. Consequently, the concerns about health outcomes became an issue in urban planning. This research focuses on health outcomes within the built environment. Specifically, considering more physical activities in Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) station areas, the study investigates its relationship with health outcomes, including obesity, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, asthma, and heart diseases. Furthermore, the study will examine the impact of a transit station on health outcomes predicting the probability of having health outcomes due to living within transit station areas. The goal is to contribute to promoting healthier communities and places. It will also consider creating an understanding of healthier communities for all races, ages, gender, and income classes, contributing to achieving social equity. This paper's primary matter is the built environment, which has contributed to affecting public health. Many researchers that examined the role of the built environment in impacting public health indicated that the built environment could encourage physical activity. Hence, well-documented research found that land use and public transit influence different modes of transportation, such as walking and bicycling (Frank, Andresen, & Schmid, 2004; Kent & Thompson, 2012), resulting in an impact on physical activity. Additionally, several scholars investigated the built environment and its relation to health outcomes, and a few have examined TOD. This research attempts to fill a gap from an urban planning perspective. Hence, this research is one of the few studies focusing on the relationship and impact of TOD and health outcomes. Besides, most research investigating TOD and public health is qualitative. However, transportation and public health issues are preferred to be addressed using quantitative methods (Litman, 2012). Consequently, this research is unique in terms of the study area, the unit of analysis, dataset, and methodology techniques. The research will answer the following question: 1. Is there a relationship between TOD transit stations and public health? This research uses public health data for the survey year 2018, which is collected every year and is available from the Selected Metropolitan Area Risk Trends (SMART). The data is an individual response by telephone surveys that are nested within a county and city level that share the same data, such as the built environment, socioeconomic, and more (Ewing et al., 2014). Thus, this database provides city and census tract-level data for chronic disease, health outcomes, and clinical preventive service use for the largest 500 cities in the United States aggregated from SMART. Therefore, to answer the research questions, we use Multi-level Modeling (MLM) to investigate the relationship. Furthermore, the study will compare transit stations and rail stations in terms of health outcomes.

Keywords

Transit-oriented development (TOD), Health outcomes, Public transit, Public health

Disciplines

Architecture | Urban, Community and Regional Planning

License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Comments

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

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