EFTI Seminar Series Spring 2020 Starts with presentation from EFTI researcher

EFTI Seminars are a great opportunity for students and other faculty to get updated on each other’s works, share knowledge, provide feedback and collaborate. On February 21st, we kicked off the EFTI Seminar Series Spring 2020 with a presentation from one of our own faculty, Dr. Jinwon Kim. The project titled “Urban Sprawl and Physical Activity: A Macrolevel Approach” was a collaboration with Changwook Kim, PhD candidate in the department of Sport Management.

Around 28% of the American population is inactive, which is pointed out as the cause of a range of health issues. The researchers wanted to explore whether the lack of participation in physical activity is influenced by the environment in which people live, giving extensive reliance on automobiles promoted by certain patterns of urban development, for example. The consequences of urban sprawl pointed by Dr. Kim go even further, impacting pollution, traffic, social fragmentation, socio-economic disparities, participation in physical activity, and health.

Dr. Kim employed GIS-based mapping spatial regression analysis using GWR to identify and analyze 37 urban counties out of the 67 Florida counties, and the association between urban sprawl and physical activity. The study explored four different aspects of physical activity: activity type, frequency, intensity and duration. Additionally, it explores activity as a leisure time, domestic, occupational and transportation.

The results show that counties with higher urban sprawl had less participation in the majority of types of physical activity; however, these counties were the regions with highest participation in muscle strength activities. Additionally, the study also explored the relationship between the first two factors, urban sprawl and physical activity with other variables such as obesity, criminality, etc.

The contribution of the study to the industry include geographic insights on location for placement of recreation spaces, aiming more healthy, sustainable and resilient communities.