Walking or bicycling to school provides an opportunity for children to increase their daily physical activity levels. However, a child’s opportunity to walk or bicycle to school can be constrained or enhanced by the location of the school and the built environment of the surrounding neighborhood. In this project, researchers at the University of Florida will be studying how requirements for coordination between local governments on school locations affect improvements in access to school by bicycling and walking and also analyze the potential for walking based on a number of built environment variables. A total of ten schools will be selected from four school districts in Florida that have varying degrees of school siting practices. Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and surveys, each school and surrounding neighborhood will be analyzed for its ability to produce walking and bicycling trips to school. Results of the case studies will be used to help inform how coordinating school siting policies can affect children walking and bicycling to school.
