Abstract Aged-care centres are one of the common places used by the older Australian population as their residence. While these centres provide many health supports and assistance for the well-being of the residents, there are still many health benefits for this population by walking in the environment outside the centre, because of the positive effect of walking on health and the opportunities it provides for social interaction. However, to choose walking is dependent on several factors, some of which pertain to the availability of and accessibility to the facilities around the care centres. This paper has approached accessibility as a matter of walking distance to the facilities or services, or to the public transport with potential access to them. For this purpose, the paper has analysed the walking distances from residential aged-care centres to services and transport in the six largest Australian cities which host over 50% of the residential capacity of the aged-care centres within the country. The services included cafes, pharmacies, grocery stores, news agents, lottery outlets, and post offices. The study has used the 2017 database of aged-care centres from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, and Google Map API services to locate the services and transport stops around the centres and calculate the walking distances to them. The results indicated that in all cities, most of services were only in a walking distance for healthier residents, while the less mobile residents might have difficulty walking to the services, especially the pharmacies. Nevertheless, majority of centres were within a walking distance to points of public transport. In addition, the study found that the centres' distance to services varied considerably both inside a city and between cities, which implied there might have been no prior planning in the selection of the locations for building or repurposing the centres.

中文翻译：

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澳大利亚城市住宅老年护理中心的服务和目的地的步行距离

摘要 养老中心是澳大利亚老年人常住的场所之一。虽然这些中心为居民的福祉提供了许多健康支持和帮助，但由于步行对健康的积极影响及其提供的机会，在中心外的环境中步行仍然可以为这些人群带来许多健康益处用于社交互动。然而，选择步行取决于几个因素，其中一些与护理中心周围设施的可用性和可达性有关。本文将可访问性视为到设施或服务的步行距离，或到具有潜在可达性的公共交通工具的步行距离。以此目的，该论文分析了澳大利亚六大城市从养老中心到服务和交通的步行距离，这些城市拥有全国超过 50% 的养老中心。这些服务包括咖啡馆、药房、杂货店、新闻代理、彩票网点和邮局。该研究使用了澳大利亚健康与福利研究所 2017 年的老年护理中心数据库和 Google Map API 服务来定位中心周围的服务和交通站点，并计算到它们的步行距离。结果表明，在所有城市中，大多数服务仅在健康居民步行范围内，而行动不便的居民可能难以步行到服务，尤其是药店。尽管如此，大多数中心都在步行距离内到公共交通点。此外，研究发现，中心与服务的距离在城市内部和城市之间差异很大，这意味着在选择建造或重新利用中心的位置时可能没有事先规划。