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Author Archives: Built Environment and Health
Python script to process and merge NYC MapPLUTO data
We are happy to share a python script that downloads and compiles all of the current and archived New York City (NYC) Department of City Planning’s (DCP) MapPluto versions into a single file geodatabase with feature datasets for each year-version. … Continue reading
Posted in Tools
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Beyond Your Waist and Lungs: BEH Investigates Pedestrian Injury Risk
While most of our work to date has been concerned with physical activity, obesity and asthma, the built environment can also shape injury risk. Nearly 5,000 pedestrians in the U.S. are killed by motor vehicles ever year, and a small … Continue reading
Posted in CANVAS, Safety, Street View
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Our Knight Foundation News Challenge project moves forward: so we made a video
Out of the 643 entries submitted to the Knight Foundation News Challenge, our project “Open CANVAS: A Web Application Harnessing Google Street View to Collect and Share Data on Neighborhoods” was one of the 40 projects selected as finalists. Each … Continue reading
Posted in CANVAS, Street View
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Food Environment Impact: Fast Food vs. Bodegas
In urban areas such as New York City, many corner stores (“bodegas”) offer prepared or ready-to-eat food. In studies of the food environment, researchers usually consider bodegas as grocery stores, and compare them with large stores such as supermarkets. But … Continue reading
Posted in Food Environment
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Our Entry for the Knight News Challenge: How can we harness data and information for the health of communities?
We entered a project into the Knight News Foundation Challenge: How can we harness data and information for the health of communities? Our proposal is to further develop our CANVAS: Street View project and make it available to researchers, agencies … Continue reading
Posted in CANVAS, Safety, Street View, Urban Design
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Food Environment and BMI in NYC
We have continued our work studying the food environment in NYC, developing measures that take a more ecosystem perspective on neighborhood food environments. For each zip code, we measured the density of food outlets, the proportion of retail food outlets … Continue reading
Posted in Adults, Food Environment
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New Book on Urban Design
A new book by Reid Ewing and Otto Clemente, Measuring Urban Design: Metrics for Livable Places (Island Press, 2013) includes a chapter by BEH researchers. The chapter, by Kathryn Neckerman, Marnie Purciel, James Quinn, and Andrew Rundle, reports on a … Continue reading
Posted in Active Transport, Aesthetics, Urban Design
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Neighborhood Fast Food Restaurants, Economic Investment and Adolescent Obesity
Many researchers, public health officials and policy makers suggest that neighborhood characteristics may influence dietary and physical activity patterns and thus influence obesity risk. Because of the evidence that fast food consumption is linked to obesity, researchers interested in neighborhood … Continue reading
Steve Mooney receives Award at Society for Epidemiologic Research Annual Meeting
Steve Mooney, a doctoral student with the BEH group, won a best poster presentation award at the Society for Epidemiologic Research annual conference for his work on the effects on causal inference of error in measuring contextual variables. Proportion of … Continue reading
Posted in Methods
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Obesity among Children from Low Income Families in NYC
Our recent paper in published in the journal Preventive Medicine looks at obesity among children in a means-tested preschool program in New York City. Among the 11,562 children from low income families enrolled the program in 2004, 16% were overweight and 24% … Continue reading
Posted in Childhood, Safety
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Built Environment and Health Research Group 