Relationship between the Built Environment in the Community and Individual Health in Incheon, Korea

Abstract

With increasing global interest in creating healthy communities, research in urban planning and public health has been progressing on this topic. While discussions and researches in South Korea are beginning to occur at the urban planning level, most studies hitherto have centered round public health, with very few considerations of built environments. This paper aims to explore how individual characteristics and built environments in the community are correlated to individual health levels in Incheon, Korea. This study establishes a conceptual model to examine the relationship between public health, individual attributes, and built environments and analyze the effect of built environments on health level using a multilevel regression model. The results reveal that, with the exception of some variables, the correlations between individual health levels and built environment variables are statistically significant.

• built environment
• public health
• healthy community
• multilevel
• Incheon