Behavioral Choices and the Built Environment
Conditions in the built environment can directly affect health and can indirectly affect health by influencing behavioral choices. The environment is not the only determinant of behavioral choices; it acts together with other factors including cultural pr
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Introduction For the past decade, Sally’s office has been located on the sixth floor of a traditionally designed office tower. People entering the building confront a lobby flanked by two banks of elevators. To find the stairs, they must pass the elevators and travel down a dimly lit hallway to an unmarked steel door. Under normal conditions, however, the door is locked for security reasons. As a person who professionally and personally promotes physical activity, it bothers Sally to work in a building where she cannot walk the stairs to her office. Thus it was with some pleasure that she heard the news several years ago that owing to necessary renovations to the elevators, temporary access to the stairs would be granted. On the first day of this new arrangement, Sally happily began to climb to the sixth floor. By the fourth floor, she was breathing hard. By the fifth floor she had to stop to catch her breath. Sally A.L. Dannenberg et al. (eds.), Making Healthy Places: Designing and Building for Health, Well-being, and Sustainability, DOI 10.5822/978-1-61091-036-1_17, © Island Press 2011
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STRATEGIES FOR HEALTHY PLACES: A TOOLBOX
was chagrined. She exercises regularly and thought she was in fairly good shape, yet the climb to the sixth floor proved to be a challenge. She met the challenge, however, and over the next few months climbed the stairs at least once and sometimes three times a day. By the end of that time the improvement in her cardiovascular fitness was noticeable. Sadly, as soon as the elevator renovations were finished, the stairs were closed off again. It was not long before Sally lost all the fitness gains that had accrued during the time her access to the stairs was unrestricted. Soon thereafter she organized with other stair users to approach building management about the issue.
This anecdote illustrates several of the principles to be covered in this chapter. First, the design of the built environment has implications for personal behavior related to both individual health and environmentally sustainable patterns of energy consumption. Access to stairs is a prerequisite for selecting stairs over the elevator. Second, personal characteristics (in this case, Sally’s predisposition to choose the stairs over the elevator) will interact with the built environment to shape behavior. Certainly, many of Sally’s colleagues in the office building continued to take the elevator during the renovation, despite the longer wait times and improved access to the stairs. Finally, promoting personal behaviors that enhance individual health and environmental sustainability requires attention to both the context within which these behaviors are being encouraged and the factors at the individual level that motivate persons to choose one course of action over another. The focus of this book is on the role of the built environment in affecting health. However, as important as the built environment is, it is far from being the only determinant of health. Even well-lit, cheerful staircases; broad, attractive sidewalks; and safe,
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