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    • Though some microscale pedestrian features such as

    2018-10-26

    Though some microscale pedestrian features, such as esthetics, were consistently better in high-income/White neighborhoods, a pattern emerged showing that hcv protease inhibitors certain microscale pedestrian features were better in low-income or high-minority residential neighborhoods. In residential neighborhoods across all three regions, microscale pedestrian features relating to crosswalks, intersections, and sidewalks were better in low-income and high racial/ethnic minority residential neighborhoods as compared to high-income and/or mostly White residential neighborhoods. Low-income or high-minority residential neighborhoods had fewer walking obstacles, such as inadequate street lighting, roll over curbs, or absence of public transit stops. Most of these “equitable differences” were found in residential-only neighborhoods and were not as evident along routes that included a mix of residential and non-residential uses. These results support previous findings that disadvantaged groups fared better with respect to microscale pedestrian features such as public transportation stops, unobstructed sidewalks (Neckerman et al., 2009), and sidewalk completeness (Zhu & Lee, 2008). These findings may indicate that local governments are taking steps to enhance the microscale pedestrian features that are important to the safety of pedestrians. An alternate explanation is that lower-income and higher-minority neighborhoods tend to be in older parts of cities that were built to be more pedestrian-oriented. Present analyses controlled for macroscale walkability factors (e.g., residential density and intersection density) to address concerns that lower-income neighborhoods simply had higher residential density and thus better provisions for pedestrians. It would be worthwhile to examine alternate explanations for the “equitable differences” so effective policy solutions that contributed to these enhancements could be adopted widely. Whatever the reasons, “equitable differences” in pedestrian environments may help reduce disparities in physical activity-related health problems such as chronic diseases. Present findings based on direct observation of pedestrian environments by trained raters differed from environmental disparities reported based on resident self-report. In a study of adults in two of the same regions as the present study (Baltimore and Seattle regions), adult participants from lower income neighborhoods consistently reported having poorer microscale pedestrian features, including sidewalk presence and quality, crosswalk amenities, and esthetics, than higher income residents (Sallis et al., 2011). Only disparities in esthetics were replicated with both self-reported and observational measures of environments, showing discrepant results. Studies of the relation of perceived to objective environmental measures generally show moderate but somewhat inconsistent agreement (e.g., Adams et al., 2009). Though differences in indicators of esthetics may account for apparently discrepant findings in the present study, Virulent phage would be useful to improve understanding of the relation between perceived and objective measures. Study strengths included the examination of income and race/ethnicity-related disparities in microscale environments in three distinct regions of the US. Other strengths were the use of a validated direct observation measure of pedestrian microscale environment, testing of income by race/ethnicity interactions, and separating residential and mixed-use neighborhoods. A limitation of the current study was the inability to audit each participant׳s entire neighborhood or to systematically sample the routes audited to ensure representative coverage. Due to practical limitations, researchers only audited a 1/4-mile route starting at each participant׳s house, which likely did not capture all streetscape variations within each neighborhood. However, concern about sample representativeness was addressed by including a large sample of routes in each region and selecting neighborhoods with varying levels of income and macroscale walkability. The present study was conducted in three regions of the US, which is a small sample of metropolitan areas. Given the distinct patterns of findings in each region, it is important to examine streetscape disparities in many more regions that represent large cities to small towns. An important limitation was the exclusion of rural areas, which have very different built environment characteristics. Direct observation and self-report built environment measures have been developed for rural areas (Yousefian et al., 2010; Yousefian, Hansen, & Hartley, 2015), and these should be used to study environmental disparities among rural communities in multiple regions of the US. Future research might also examine how disparities in streetscape environments help explain demographic differences in physical activity across domains, especially leisure and transport.