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Using Survey Information to Make Neighborhoods Walkable and Safe
by Mia Oberlink
The implementation of smart growth principles in communities—particularly those related to land use planning, streetscape design, transportation, and housing—encourages active living, a term that denotes a way of life that integrates physical activity into daily routines. When neighborhoods are walkable and safe; homes are close to workplaces; residential areas are mixed with shopping so people can walk or bike to grocery stores, services, and other amenities; and streets are designed to accommodate pedestrians and bicyclists safely, they enable people to incorporate physical activity into their daily routines easily and inexpensively.
Children, teens, adults, and older people all can benefit from an active lifestyle, and some professionals stress that sound policies and programs to promote active living in communities are not age-specific, that is, they have the potential to benefit all community residents, regardless of age. However, because different age groups have different activity levels and preferences, it is important to understand how each age group (or any other demographic subgroup, for that matter) interacts with the environment and what facilitates its participation in routine physical activity. This helps communities ensure that policies and programs reach intended audiences and that scarce resources are well spent. Communities that want to promote active living among older residents, for example, are better able to target their efforts and achieve desired outcomes if they start with reliable information about older residents’ perceptions of their environment, the mode(s) of transportation they routinely use, and the kind of physical activity they engage in and prefer.
This article summarizes some of the things we know about older adults and physical activity on a national level and the experiences of two communities that used specific, local information about older residents to initiate efforts to make their communities safer for seniors and support active living.
Physical Activity Among Older Adults: Facts and Challenges
There seems to be general consensus that regular physical activity reduces the risk of chronic conditions, such as coronary heart disease, hypertension, colon cancer, type 2 diabetes, and osteoporosis, and that physical inactivity is prevalent in older adults. However, there is little definitive information about what the precise health benefits of physical activity are for older people, what factors influence their participation in regular physical activity, and what interventions or policies best promote physical activity and health in older populations. Research studies that have been conducted over the past 20 years, however, do offer some insights. For example, the National Health Interview Survey and the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System have found that “fewer than one third of persons aged 65 years and older participate in regular, sustained physical activity.” While these surveys provide a national picture of older adults’ activity levels, similar local information is difficult to find.
To be sure, many older people do not engage in physical activity due to disability. But there are many other obstacles that could be responsible, including negative attitudes toward exercise, lack of confidence in one’s ability to be regularly active, fear of injury and falling, and lack of social support. In surveys of people aged 65 and older conducted as part of the AdvantAge Initiative, a project of the Center for Home Care Policy and Research that helps communities measure and improve their “elder-friendliness,” some other obstacles that respondents cited included “lack of motivation” and “lack of time.” Research has also shown that “older adults living in neighborhoods with problems (e.g. heavy traffic, noise, trash, poor lighting, and lack of public transportation) experienced greater loss of physical function over a 1-year period relative to older adults living in neighborhoods with no problems,” possibly because there were fewer opportunities to be physically active in neighborhoods with problems.
When older people do engage in physical activity, walking is the most common activity that they report doing. It is reasonable to assume that much of that walking is purposeful, that is, related to daily activities such as shopping, getting to and from public transportation, walking to the post office or library, walking the dog, and so on. In fact, research has shown that older adults prefer lower rather than higher intensity activities that are convenient to do on their own and near or in their homes. Other research has shown that access to “walking paths and facilities, pleasant scenery, perceived safe environments, and the availability of sidewalks and commercial goods and services have been associated with greater levels of physical activity in older adults.”
Since walking may be the only physical activity the majority of seniors in the U.S. get, the most productive thing communities can do to promote active living among older residents is to channel their energies and resources into making the environment as walkable and safe as possible. While this may sound like a simple or obvious recommendation, in some communities improving walkability by, for example, building sidewalks where there are none or making it easier to cross busy avenues on foot, may not be considered a priority because residents’ primary mode of transportation is the automobile. Other communities may have the will to make such improvements but face a variety of barriers to put that will into action.
Two Communities Strive to Improve Walkability and Pedestrian Safety
Located at opposite ends of the country, Puyallup, Washington, and the Lincoln Square neighborhood of New York City could not be more different from one another. Puyallup is a city near Seattle with a population of 100,000, of which more than 10,000 are 65 and older. Lincoln Square is a public housing development on Manhattan’s west side with approximately 600 residents aged 65 and older. The former has a largely white, middle class, population living in single-family homes. The latter has a largely nonwhite, low-income population living in rental apartments. These communities, however, were two of the ten pilot communities that participated in the AdvantAge Initiative because they wanted to make their communities more elder friendly. When they joined the Initiative, they agreed to use findings from a scientifically valid, local consumer survey to help plan and implement measures to improve community livability for older residents.
The AdvantAge Initiative survey of older adults was conducted in both communities, and many of the findings confirmed expected differences between the two communities. For example, Puyallup is an automobile-dominant community: 96 percent of Puyallup seniors travel by car to get around, either as drivers or passengers; while the city has some public transportation, seniors do not use it; and only one percent of Puyallup seniors say that walking is their primary means of transportation. On the other hand, 67 percent of Lincoln Square seniors use public transportation to get around, and 19 percent said that walking is their primary means of transportation. Interestingly, however, when asked to name problems in their neighborhoods, seniors in these two very different communities had surprisingly similar responses. Forty-nine percent of Puyallup seniors and 44 percent of Lincoln Square seniors named heavy traffic as a top neighborhood problem. Seniors in both locales complained that their communities have too few traffic lights or that lights change too quickly, streets need repair, and streets are too dark.
Task force members of the AdvantAge Initiative of Puyallup conducted follow-up focus groups with seniors to understand these findings better and found that, even though Puyallup is a car-dominant community, seniors brought up concerns about a number of environmental factors that threaten pedestrian safety, such as traffic volume, lack or poor condition of sidewalks, and safety concerns related to bicycle path and trail use. Older pedestrian concerns may not have been on the city’s radar, but when the task force alerted the public works department to these findings, the two decided to collaborate and submitted a grant application (which was subsequently awarded) to create senior-friendly crosswalks near a downtown senior center and post office branch used by a significant number of older adults and implement features such as better signage and pavement lighting to begin to improve walkability and pedestrian safety.
Safety became a major concern for the Lincoln Square AdvantAge Initiative task force when their survey results revealed that nearly half of the development’s older residents believed that crime and heavy traffic are major problems in the neighborhood. Fear of becoming a crime victim was keeping older residents indoors. In response, the task force began a major campaign to address crime in the neighborhood with the help of the police department, elected officials, senior residents, and the public housing authority. Fear of harm by cars was also prevalent, and two unfortunate events put traffic problems on the task force’s front burner. Two Lincoln Square senior residents were killed by motorists as they tried to cross two different streets surrounding the housing development. The New York City Department of Transportation (NYCDOT) was called in to evaluate the structural issues that task force members believed were responsible for these accidents. In the first case, the NYCDOT determined that the pedestrian was responsible because she tried to cross the street at the middle of the block, not at the legal crosswalk, and concluded that no changes needed to be made to the crosswalks on that street. In the second case, task force members believed that the timing of the traffic lights and speeding traffic were responsible for the fatality. As of this writing, the task force is in the process of trying to convince the NYCDOT to lengthen the timing of lights in this crosswalk. This time, they have solicited the assistance of Transportation Alternatives, a not-for-profit organization that works for better bicycling, walking, public transit, and safer streets, that has had past success in influencing street design. In addition, after the task force brought these issues to the attention of the local state assemblywoman, she decided to make senior pedestrian safety her signature issue.
Information: A Catalyst for Action
In both Puyallup and Lincoln Square, the findings from the AdvantAge Initiative survey of older adults (which also included a great deal of information about the health, social interaction, and civic engagement of older adults, in addition to their perceptions of neighborhood problems) became a catalyst for action. This was the first time stakeholders in each community had access to such thorough, in-depth information about the older people who live in their communities. The findings provided insights about the well-being of seniors; they helped stakeholders prioritize aging-related issues in their communities and plan intervention strategies; and they gave stakeholders hard data that they could use to attract the attention of local government officials and others who have the power to make change happen. Several years after the survey was conducted in these two communities, stakeholders are still using the findings to help them make their communities more elder friendly.
Mia Oberlink, M.A. is research associate for the Center for Home Care Policy and Research at the Visiting Nurses of New York. She is currently managing a project entitled Promoting Elders' Health & Well-Being: Benchmarks for Supportive Communities (also known as the AdvantAge Initiative. She has authored and co-authored numerous journal articles and papers, as well as a book, on the topic of older adults. She may be contacted by phone at 212/609-1537 or by e-mail at mia.oberlink@vnsny.org.
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