While the relationship between accessibility and non-motorized travel has been established, much less is known of how variations in income, race, age, and gender affect travel behavior. This focus is important for two reasons. First, research has shown that obesity is highest among African-Americans, Hispanics, elderly, women, and less-educated. Second, as recognized by the academic and the professional literature, these populations are under-represented in research on community design, land-use, and travel behavior. In fact, the issue of how race, social class, and gender might affect human activity patterns, including travel, remains unresolved within geography, planning, urban design, and public health. Bringing together an experienced interdisciplinary team (from Epidemiology, Urban Planning, Urban Design, and Geography) to study this issue provides an original and innovative opportunity. In addition, the project will integrate modern computing and simulation theory with urban design, two research tracts that are dissimilar enough in language and methods that they traditionally hindered collaborative work.
The general hypothesis is that neighborhood structure is a precondition in defining individual and community activity patterns. Social class, race, along with the sense of value of personal well-being, are key determinants of travel behavior. The team will gather data from six two-mile square neighborhoods in the Detroit Region. Surveys will be mailed to 1600 households in the two inner-city Detroit neighborhoods and 800 households in four suburban Detroit neighborhoods. This will enable the research team to focus on urban form, travel behavior, physical activity, and obesity within the context of diverse socioeconomic conditions and race/ethnic populations.
The research objectives include: 1) measuring neighborhood accessibility within the six neighborhoods; 2) exploring how perceptions of travel behavior vary by income, race, age, and gender; 3) exploring travel differences among the inner-city Detroit residents and the suburban residents in Birmingham, Ann Arbor, Bloomfield and West Bloomfield; 4) exploring the association between obesity and accessibility; 5) exploring whether variations in travel behavior across the six neighborhoods are affected by differences in neighborhood structure and connectivity; and 6) exploring urban structural modifiers of behavior including system feedbacks, thresholds, and dynamics in a complex systems simulation framework. Statistical methods of relevance include dummy variable and polynomial regression, location-allocation models, discriminant analysis, and multinomial logit models. A dynamic spatial simulation-modeling environment will be employed to characterize, link, and model structural determinants, feedback systems, thresholds, and individual, household, and community behaviors.
In terms of the study's broader impacts, the team has established close connection with local and state community partners, including the Governor's Council on Physical Fitness, Health and Sports, the Michigan Suburbs Alliance, the City of Detroit, U-SNAP-BAC (a Detroit Community Development Corporation), and Blue Cross-Blue Shield. While members of these agencies will be acting as project advisors, project reviewers, technical experts, and will be disseminating the project results, the research will also be providing data and analyses that the partners do not have access to, but do require in order to improve urban management practices. In addition, two Detroit residents that are currently unemployed and volunteering with U-SNAP-BAC will be hired to help with the data collection. With regard to the educational component of broader impacts, students will be involved directly working with fiscally distressed municipalities, reinforcing the theories and concepts learned in class, while providing pro-bono community design proposals.
