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An Active City Approach for Urban Development

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Abstract

With an increasing percentage of the global population living in cities and the concurrent decrease in physical activity in daily life, public health issues for urban development have arisen. This study responds to that trend by presenting an approach to measure city-wide physical activity levels. Comparing of city indices for active sports and the active transportation shows differences between subject cities and activity level of age groups in sports as well as walking and cycling. Therefore, our study lends itself to implications for urban development towards creating a healthier city.

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Notes

  1. As an update to the IPAQ, we set the MET value for walking for transportation to 3.7 and the MET value for cycling for transportation to 5.4. The 2011 Compendium of Physical Activities has updated the MET values in comparison to the scoring method of the IPAQ from 2005. Walking for transport represents the mean of walking for pleasure (3.5), walking for transportation 2.8–3.2 mph, level, moderate pace, firm surface (3.5), and walking, to work or class (4.0). Cycling for transport represents the mean of bicycling, <10 mph, leisure, to work or for pleasure (4.0) and bicycling, to/from work, self-selected pace (6.8).

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Acknowledgment

The authors gratefully thank Mr. Thomas Ritter from the CATI-Laboratory of the University of Jena (Germany) for his support and the whole data collection team. This study was conducted without any third-party research grants.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Chair of Sports Economics and Health Economics, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Jena, Germany

    Frank Daumann, Robin Heinze, Benedikt Römmelt & Anne Wunderlich

Authors
  1. Frank Daumann
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  2. Robin Heinze
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  3. Benedikt Römmelt
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  4. Anne Wunderlich
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Correspondence to Robin Heinze.

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Daumann, F., Heinze, R., Römmelt, B. et al. An Active City Approach for Urban Development. J Urban Health 92, 217–229 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11524-014-9929-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11524-014-9929-9

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