Tackling obesity by urban planning? Recent research and a European case study: some evidence and perspectives

Considerable research has been undertaken in recent years in order to understand the relationship between being overweight or obese and urban design. Almost all researchers focusing on this link work in North America. However this problematic has recently become a research topic in Europe. Thus, one may question the relevance of the current way of thinking and methodology and its transferability from the U.S. to Europe. Recent literature dealing with the issue of the relationship between being overweight or obese and the built environment in urban context is presented in this paper. Theories from this literature have then been compared with evidence from the field, based on a medium-sized town in Germany, a country often described as less suburban. Conclusions reached in North America seem irrelevant to our European case, which shows that U.S. solutions cannot simply be transferred directly. We came up with suggest that one has to understand both morphological and human aspects of citi is to gain a deeper understanding of overweight or obesity by a spatial approach on an inner-urban scal