Towards Resilient Urban Design: Revealing the Impacts of Built Environment on Physical Activity Amidst Climate Change

Abstract

Understanding how urban environmental features shape physical activity is crucial for building health-supportive cities, especially under climate change pressures such as rising temperatures and extreme weather. Previous studies emphasized density and accessibility, but the spatial mechanisms driving facility usage remain understudied. This study investigates how land use diversity, the distribution of physical activity facilities, street network structure, and road accessibility shape physical activity behaviours at the neighbourhood scale. Using a 500 m × 500 m grid framework in Xiamen, China, a random forest model combined with Shapley Additive Explanations (SHAP) is employed to quantify the importance of environment indicators. The results demonstrate that road accessibility and street connectivity exert the strongest influence on physical activity facility use, followed by land use diversity and 15 min reachable residential Points of Interests (POIs). Spatial autocorrelation and cluster analysis further reveal that high-impact areas are concentrated in central and southern zones, whereas peripheral regions face accessibility deficits. These findings highlight the value of integrating transport planning and land use configuration to address spatial disparities in facility usage. The study contributes a replicable methodological framework and provides practical insights for advancing equitable and activity-friendly neighbourhood design.