Built Environment Assessment

A healthy community does not happen by accident. It requires a comprehensive approach covering all aspects of social, physical, and economic environments. Creating environments that promote healthy behaviors and improve health outcomes in our communities requires collaboration and partnerships between planning and health professionals.

MVRPC’s PLAN4Health – Miami Valley Initiative, launched in spring of 2021, explores how planning can impact health outcomes and seeks to achieve the goal of healthy people and communities in the Dayton Metro Region.

The PLAN4Health - Miami Valley Initiative is a multi-year effort with a focus on projects and programs intended to:

The PLAN4Health - Miami Valley Initiative does not seek to develop a regional health plan or duplicate activities undertaken by local public health departments. Rather, projects and programs are geared towards information sharing, capacity building, and generating collaborative solutions.

Click the button below to learn more about MVRPC's PLAN4Health - Miami Valley Initiative.

Keep scrolling to learn more about the Built Environment Assessment. The Built Environment Assessment is the second project from the PLAN4Health - Miami Valley Initiative.

The  Health Environment Assessment , the first project from the PLAN4Health - Miami Valley Initiative, examined a range of factors that are commonly known as the Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) to establish a broad existing conditions baseline in the Region.

The Built Environment Assessment, the second project of the PLAN4Health - Miami Valley Initiative, shifts the focus to how the health and well-being of residents could be improved through planning. Using the Active Community Index, the Built Environment Assessment establishes a baseline for active living conditions in the Miami Valley. The baseline established from the Built Environment Assessment will be used to:

• Understand the current conditions for active living in our neighborhoods and communities.
• Identify locations where the built environment could be improved to make active living an easy choice for residents.
• Start a conversation between planners and other stakeholders involved in designing and developing our communities on how to create environments that promote healthy behaviors and improve health outcomes in our communities.

The Built Environment Assessment uses a comprehensive Active Community Index (ACI) to examine the Region's current built environments for their ability to support active living conditions.

Here are some important facts and features about the Built Environment Assessment:

• Examines three (3) Active Community domains that influence active living: Land Use; Pedestrian Friendly Environment; and Activity Infrastructure
• Provides interactive maps for each domain
• Shares domain level physical environment trends and highlights findings for the populations of interest
• Presents a composite map of the domains as an Active Community Index
• Shares findings from the in-depth analysis of the Active Community Index including physical environment trends, general population analysis, populations of interest analysis, and population of interest by neighborhood types, and more.

Continue to the next section for a brief overview and important considerations that were employed during the assessment.

The Built Environment Assessment examined man-made physical environmental conditions that influence active living and developed an Active Community Index (ACI) for the purpose of establishing a comprehensive baseline of how amenable an area's built environment is to active living.

The ACI incorporates critical dimensions of density, intensity, diversity, and accessibility of the built environment and is a composite of three domains: Land Use; Pedestrian Friendly Environment; and Activity Infrastructure. The ACI scores are divided into 5 classes where "Very High" indicates an environment with good active living conditions while "Very Low" indicates poor active living conditions.

 _{Source: Miami Valley Regional Planning Commission}  

Throughout the Miami Valley, older established communities are found to have higher ACI scores indicating that these areas have built environments that support active living. This is likely because of how development approaches have changed over time. In older communities, more dense and mixed use development patterns and grid transportation networks with better connectivity are observed. As suburban development patterns become more prominent beginning in the 1960s, built environments were designed with priority for automobiles and with separation of land uses. As a result, development became less dense and diverse and transportation networks became less connected, negatively impacting active living conditions.

Click on the map to explore data for a given area.

The Built Environment Assessment reveals that current conditions for active living in our neighborhoods and communities vary. Generally, older communities are found to have built environments that better support active living than newly developed areas. The trend has been that development patterns have become less supportive of active living over the years. Further, the assessment identified that there are a significant number of people living in an areas where choosing an active living lifestyle is not an easy choice.

The baseline established from the Built Environment Assessment should serve as a foundation as our communities and Region make efforts to improve health outcomes for residents. Planning is the means by which communities shape their physical space and provide environments in which people live, work, and play.  These environments impact health and well-being of our residents in a variety of ways. Planners and other stakeholders involved in designing and developing our communities, in collaboration and partnership health professionals, will need to advance planning efforts aimed at creating environments that promote healthy behaviors, improve health outcomes, and achieve healthy people and communities.

Established in 1964, the Miami Valley Regional Planning Commission promotes collaboration among communities, stakeholders, and residents to advance regional priorities. MVRPC is a forum and resource where the Board of Directors identifies priorities and develops public policy and collaborative strategies to improve quality of life throughout the Miami Valley Region.

MVRPC performs planning and research functions for our Region that ensure livable and equitable communities; clean air and water; robust roadway, transit, and active transportation options; and strategic community plans that chart the course for member communities and partners. MVRPC’s Regional Transportation Planning Organization (RTPO) involves Preble, Darke, and Shelby Counties. As the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO), MVRPC is responsible for transportation planning in Greene, Miami and Montgomery Counties and parts of northern Warren County. MVRPC's areawide water quality planning designation encompasses five (5) counties: Darke, Preble plus the three MPO counties.

For more information, contact: Martin Kim, Director of Community and Regional Planning at mkim@mvrpc.org.