Street connectivity, defined as the number of (3-way or more) intersections per area unit, is an important index of built environments as a proxy for walkability in a neighborhood. This paper examines its geographic variations across the rural-urban continuum (urbanicity), major racial-ethnic groups and various poverty levels. The population-adjusted street connectivity index is proposed as a better measure than the regular index for a large area such as county due to likely concentration of population in limited space within the large area. Based on the data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), this paper uses multilevel modeling to analyze its association with physical activity and obesity while controlling for various individual and county-level variables. Analysis of data subsets indicates that the influences of individual and county-level variables on obesity risk vary across areas of different urbanization levels. The positive influence of street connectivity on obesity control is limited to the more but not the mostly urbanized areas. This demonstrates the value of obesogenic environment research in different geographic settings, helps us reconcile and synthesize some seemingly contradictory results reported in different studies, and also promotes that effective policies need to be highly sensitive to the diversity of demographic groups and geographically adaptable.

中文翻译：

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美国人口调整后的街道连通性、城市化和肥胖风险

街道连通性，定义为每个区域单位（3 路或更多）交叉路口的数量，是建筑环境的重要指标，作为邻里可步行性的代理。本文研究了城乡连续体（城市化）、主要种族族裔群体和各种贫困水平的地理差异。由于人口可能集中在大面积有限空间内，因此建议将人口调整后的街道连通性指数作为比常规指数更好的衡量指标，适用于大面积区域（例如县）。本文基于行为风险因素监测系统 (BRFSS) 的数据，在控制各种个人和县级变量的同时，使用多级建模来分析其与身体活动和肥胖的关联。对数据子集的分析表明，个体和县级变量对肥胖风险的影响在不同城市化水平的地区之间存在差异。街道连通性对肥胖控制的积极影响仅限于更多但不是大多数城市化的地区。这证明了致肥胖环境研究在不同地理环境中的价值，帮助我们调和和综合不同研究报告的一些看似矛盾的结果，也促进了有效的政策需要对人口群体的多样性高度敏感并具有地理适应性。