Table 1 Urban form features and their measurement

Density

Number of dwellings per hectare (dw/ha). A second variable is a housing diversity score measured according to eight types (e.g. one storey terrace, two storey terrace, etc.), which serves as a proxy for compact living.

Design

Street connectivity was used as the measure of ‘design’ as it determines the ease of walking and proximity of destinations [38], measured as the number of intersections as an indicator of street connectivity [82].

Diversity

Diversity refers to the different uses of land in a given area. A land use mix score was developed based on the entropy measure of [83] where a high index represents a greater diversity of six land uses: commercial, education, industrial, parkland, residential and transport.

Destination accessibility

Destination accessibility was measured as a binary indicator representing the presence or absence of supermarkets, bus stops and train stations within 1 km, 400 m and 800 m respectively. These distances were chosen as they align to Victorian State government policy [84]. A second variable (local living destinations score) included 12 local living destinations (e.g. convenience store, supermarket, public transport stop, specialty food store, post office, bank, pharmacy, general practice/medical centre, dentist, community centre/hall, child care facility and library) to account for destination diversity which has been shown to influence walking behaviour [36].

Distance to transit

Measured as the presence of bus stops within 400 m and train stations within 800 m.