歩きやすい都市の人々は有意に多く歩くことが判明(People in walkable cities walk significantly more)

2025-08-13 コロンビア大学

<関連情報>

• https://www.washington.edu/news/2025/08/13/people-in-walkable-cities-walk-significantly-more/
• https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09321-3
• https://www.nature.com/articles/nature23018

全国規模の自然実験が、構築環境と身体活動との関連性を明らかにする Countrywide natural experiment links built environment to physical activity

Tim Althoff,Boris Ivanovic,Abby C. King,Jennifer L. Hicks,Scott L. Delp & Jure Leskovec
Nature  Published:13 August 2025
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09321-3

Abstract

While physical activity is critical to human health, most people do not meet recommended guidelines^1,2. Built environments that are more walkable have the potential to increase activity across the population^3,4,5,6,7,8. However, previous studies on the built environment and physical activity have led to mixed findings, possibly due to methodological limitations such as small cohorts, over-reliance on self-reported measures and cross-sectional designs^5,7,9,10,11. Here we address these limitations by leveraging a large US cohort of smartphone users (N = 2,112,288) to evaluate within-person longitudinal behaviour changes that occurred over 248,266 days of objectively measured physical activity across 7,447 relocations among 1,609 US cities. By analysing the results of this natural experiment, which exposed individuals to differing built environments, we find that increases (decreases) in walkability are associated with significant increases (decreases) in physical activity after relocation. For example, moving from a less walkable (25th percentile) city to a more walkable city (75th percentile) increased walking by 1,100 daily steps, on average. These changes hold across different genders, ages and body mass index values, and are sustained over 3 months. The added activity is predominantly composed of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, which is linked to an array of associated health benefits¹. Evidence against residential self-selection confounding is reported. Our findings provide robust evidence supporting the importance of the built environment in directly improving health-enhancing physical activity and offer potential guidance for public policy activities in this area.

大規模な身体活動データが世界的な活動格差を明らかにする Large-scale physical activity data reveal worldwide activity inequality

Tim Althoff,Rok Sosič,Jennifer L. Hicks,Abby C. King,Scott L. Delp & Jure Leskovec
Nature  Published:10 July 2017
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/nature23018

Abstract

To be able to curb the global pandemic of physical inactivity^{1,2,3,4,5,6,7} and the associated 5.3 million deaths per year², we need to understand the basic principles that govern physical activity. However, there is a lack of large-scale measurements of physical activity patterns across free-living populations worldwide^1,6. Here we leverage the wide usage of smartphones with built-in accelerometry to measure physical activity at the global scale. We study a dataset consisting of 68 million days of physical activity for 717,527 people, giving us a window into activity in 111 countries across the globe. We find inequality in how activity is distributed within countries and that this inequality is a better predictor of obesity prevalence in the population than average activity volume. Reduced activity in females contributes to a large portion of the observed activity inequality. Aspects of the built environment, such as the walkability of a city, are associated with a smaller gender gap in activity and lower activity inequality. In more walkable cities, activity is greater throughout the day and throughout the week, across age, gender, and body mass index (BMI) groups, with the greatest increases in activity found for females. Our findings have implications for global public health policy and urban planning and highlight the role of activity inequality and the built environment in improving physical activity and health.