THE ROLE OF THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT FOR ACTIVE AGING IN HILLY AREA

Abstract

There are many sprawled areas in hilly residential areas on the outskirts of mega cities. In recent years, some of these areas have a lot of issues such as aging population and delivery of social welfare services. The areas of steep slopes and steps bring about low physical and social activity. There is a growing body of evidence that physical and social activities can improve health for the elderly people. Furthermore, theirs participations of community is helpful to community revitalization. Therefore, Understanding the role of the built environment on social activity is a significant aspect. However, little empirical research has been conducted. This article aims to examine the associations between built environment attributes and social activity among older adults in hilly area. A sample of 790older adults residing in the study area provided reports of social participation and information about health, sociodemographic characteristics, social networks, and perceptions about features of their residential environment. Measure of distance between their home and four locations deemed to be conducive to social participation were obtained from a geographic information system (GIS). Relationships between hills effect and household composition were tested using cross-tabulations with chi-square tests and analyses of variance. The results suggest that in the hilly areas they move to early when living alone. And results obtained from conducting a two-way analysis of variance using standardized scores show that age and hills effect were a significant main effect of social activity. On the other hands, there was a nonsignificant main effect of hills on the individual health states. Finally multilevel logistic regression models were used for the analyses. The following results were obtained: first, under 74year, Individual health states, IADL and quantity of social network can encourage social activity. Environmental factors are nonsignificant correlated with social activity. Second, over 75year, Individual health states, IADL, quantity of social network, and some of environmental fact such as hill and proximity to facilities (community facilities, grocery store) are significant correlated with social activity. Findings show that impact of the built environment is significant with advancing age.

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