Impacts of objective neighborhood built environment on older adults’ walking: literature review

As the number of older adults who want to age in place increases, communities have faced with new opportunities and challenges. Many local governments have to ensure age-friendly environments that allow older residents to be independent and to fully participate in their community. Walkability is used to measure the built environmental aspects of age-friendly environments to enable our communities to support active aging. In this research note, the author examines existing studies that assessed the association between the impacts of objectively measured neighborhood built environment and older adults’ walking. Although the relationship between the built environment and walking has been widely examined in school-age children and working-age adults, research focusing on older adults is relatively recent. The articles reviewed for this research note are mainly cross-sectional and used geographic information system-calculated residential density, proximity to destination, presence of sidewalks, street connectivity and intersections, and traffic volume. The neighborhood levels varied from a smaller street segment to city and there was inconsistency in terms of measuring how objective neighborhood built environment affected older adults’ walking. For future studies, it is suggested to use more comprehensive measurements of walkability and to conduct multiple geographic and cross-cultural studies.