ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Aging and Public Health
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1576548
This article is part of the Research TopicNeighborhoods and Community: The Role of Built and Social Environment for Healthy AgingView all articles
Built Environment Factors and Their Impact on Outdoor Walking Activity Among People Living with Dementia: A Spatial Analysis Approach
Provisionally accepted
- Department of Gerontology, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada
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As the population of people living with dementia in Canada continues to grow, understanding the built environment's role in facilitating outdoor activity is increasingly critical. While prior qualitative and quantitative research has established the benefits of outdoor walking for the physical, mental, and social well-being of people living with dementia, empirical spatial analysis of built environment factors influencing their walking behavior remains limited. This study serves as a proof of concept, demonstrating the feasibility of applying spatial analysis to assess the impact of built environment variables on outdoor walking among people living with dementia. Using data from 25 participants in Metro Vancouver, this study integrates Geographic Positioning System (GPS) and Geographic Information System (GIS) tracking with exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and multiple linear regression (MLR) to examine the relationship between built-environment characteristics and walking distances. Despite the small sample size, statistical analyses met standard validity criteria, identifying three key factors influencing walking distance: (1) Macro environment-accessibility to public transportation and street network characteristics (p = .007, 439.6m increase), (2) Micro environmentpedestrian-oriented design (p = .065, 286.5m increase), and (3) General characteristics-mixed land use and sidewalk suitability (p = .015, 388.5m increase). These findings provide preliminary evidence of the built environment's role in shaping mobility for people living with dementia, offering valuable insights for public health policy makers, urban planners and designers, and transportation professionals in designing dementia-friendly neighborhoods. By integrating spatial analysis with environmental design principles, this study contributes to the development of inclusive and accessible urban environments for people living with dementia.
Keywords: Neighborhood environment, dementia-friendly community, urban planning and design, GIS, GPS
Received: 14 Feb 2025; Accepted: 20 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Nouri and Chaudhury. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Mohammadjavad Nouri, Department of Gerontology, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada
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