Understanding the relationship between urban design and physical activity is a high priority. Different representations of land use diversity may impact the association between neighbourhood design and specific walking behaviours. This study examined different entropy based computations of land use mix (LUM) used in the development of walkability indices (WIs) and their association with walking behaviour.

Eighty per cent of adolescents globally do insufficient physical activity. Parks are a popular place for adolescents to be active. However, little is known about which park features are associated with higher levels of park use by adolescents. This study aimed to examine which environmental park features, and combination of features, were correlated with higher levels of park use for physical activity among adolescents. By examining park features in parks used by adolescents for physical activity, this study also aimed to create a park ‘attractiveness’ score predictive of adolescent park use, and to identify factors that might predict use of their closest park. Adolescents (n = 1304) living in Geraldton, a large rural centre of Western Australia, completed a survey that measured physical activity behaviour, perceptions of park availability and the main park used for physical activity. All parks in the study area (n = 58) were digitized using a Geographic Information System (GIS) and features audited using the Public Open Space Desktop Auditing Tool (POSDAT). Only 27% of participants reported using their closest park for physical activity. Park use was associated with seven features: presence of a skate park, walking paths, barbeques, picnic table, public access toilets, lighting around courts and equipment and number of trees >25. When combined to create an overall attractiveness score, every additional ‘attractive’ feature present, resulted in a park being nearly three times more likely to be in the high use category. To increase park use for physical activity, urban planners and designers should incorporate park features attractive to adolescents.

The relationships between food environments and dietary intake have been assessed via a range of methodologically diverse measures of spatial exposure to food outlets, resulting in a largely inconclusive body of evidence, limiting informed policy intervention. This systematic review aims to evaluate the influence of methodological choice on study outcomes by examining the within-study effect of availability (e.g., counts) versus accessibility (e.g., proximity) spatial exposure measures on associations with diet. (PROSPERO registration: CRD42018085250). PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus and ScienceDirect databases were searched for empirical studies from 1980 to 2017, in the English language, involving adults and reporting on the statistical association between a dietary outcome and spatial exposure measures of both availability and accessibility. Studies were appraised using an eight-point quality criteria with a narrative synthesis of results. A total of 205 associations and 44 relationships (i.e., multiple measures of spatial exposure relating to a particular food outlet type and dietary outcome) were extracted from 14 eligible articles. Comparative measures were dominated by counts (availability) and proximity (accessibility). Few studies compared more complex measures and all counts were derived from place-based measures of exposure. Sixteen of the 44 relationships had a significant effect involving an availability measure whilst only 8 had a significant effect from an accessibility measure. The largest effect sizes in relationships were mostly for availability measures. After stratification by scale, availability measure had the greatest effect size in 139 of the 176 pairwise comparisons. Of the 33% (68/205) of associations that reached significance, 53/68 (78%) were from availability measures. There was no relationship between study quality and reported study outcomes. The limited evidence suggests that availability measures may produce significant and greater effect sizes than accessibility measures. However, both availability and accessibility measures may be important concepts of spatial exposure depending on the food outlet type and dietary outcome examined. More studies reporting on multi-method effects are required to differentiate findings by the type of spatial exposure assessment and build an evidence base regarding the appropriateness and robustness of measures under different circumstances.