Toward active transport as a utilitarian and recreational form of sustainable urban mobility

The ongoing growth of motorized transport modes poses serious challenges to urban environments such as air and noise pollution, adverse health impacts, and improper allocation of space in the city. Over time, the paradigms of transport planning have shifted gradually toward active transport as a utilitarian and recreational form of sustainable urban mobility with desirable ecological, economical, and social properties. Active travel modes, concerning the physical activity of locomotion, generally include walking and bicycling, which have environmental benefits such as a decrease of carbon and reduction of traffic congestions. Besides, active transport, as a form of an active lifestyle, is one of the most usual physical activities which have numerous benefits regarding health and wellbeing, including reducing risk factors of chronic diseases, such as overweight and obesity, and increasing happiness, contentment, and engagement. Therefore, active transport has been increasingly considered in transportation and urban planning studies as an alternative for motorized transport and a sedentary lifestyle. Studies have shown that the built environment can facilitate active transport by walking or cycling to destinations and accordingly contributes to residents’ physical activity. Hence, this study aims to explore and explain the association between the built environment and active transport by urban residents through a literature review. Insights such as there are important natural/physical and macro/micro environmental characteristics that encourage the tendency for active transport as well as socioeconomic and sociodemographic attributes differently affect this indicative relationship, are subsumed in a conceptual framework that can guide future empirical studies.