Children and youth transport in different urban morphological types

As demonstrated in many earlier studies, the qualities of physical environment have great impacts on physical activity behavior. However, studying individual built environmental variables often produces contradictory effects between studies. To overcome this, we composed multivariate environmental types using principal component analysis that take notice of the inter-correlations between the physical environmental variables. To get a realistic view of the places children and adolescents visit in their daily life, we used mapping methodology where children themselves defined their important places. Based on 16 built environmental variables, six built environmental types were composed around these places.

We found that walking and cycling was most prominent in residential environments and least common in (central) business districts. Commercial environments as well as green environments had the highest proportions of car use. Most places, in general, were visited with friends, but most typically, commercial environments and (central) business districts were reached in the company of friends. Relatively many places were visited alone in residential areas.