Built Environment Interventions to Increase Active Travel: a Critical Review and Discussion

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: To review the literature on built environment interventions to increase active travel, focusing on work since 2000 and on methodological choices and challenges affecting studies. RECENT FINDINGS: Increasingly, there is evidence that built environment interventions can lead to more walking or cycling. Evidence is stronger for cycling than for walking interventions, and there is a relative lack of evidence around differential impacts of interventions. Some of the evidence remains methodologically weak, with much work in the ‘grey’ literature. SUMMARY: While evidence in the area continues to grow, data gaps remain. Greater use of quasi-experimental techniques, improvements in routine monitoring of smaller schemes, and the use of new big data sources are promising. More qualitative research could help develop a more sophisticated understanding of behaviour change.