Built environment

Universal accessibility is defined as "the character of a product, process, service, informational element or environment that, with equity and inclusiveness in mind, enables any person to perform activities independently and achieve equivalent results”.

This issue of OPUS focuses on outdoor recreational facilities, specifically facilities that are freely accessible to the public, are not reserved for members of an organization, enable the practice of recreational or sports activities and meet the needs of residents. Recreational areas such as splash parks (with the exception of swimming pools and wading pools), sports fields, walking areas and bicycle paths included in parks and green spaces are just a few examples. This issue is intended…

This document begins with a review of how housing can influence the health and quality of life of its occupants. It then presents the findings on the impact of housing on the health of the Québec population during the COVID-19 period. As a response to this impact, this report proposes strategies for improving housing conditions and reducing social inequalities in health, starting with specific actions that can support households whose housing conditions have become increasingly unstable…

The purpose of this document is to provide guidelines to support the use of parks and green spaces during the COVID-19 pandemic. It reviews the main health benefits of green spaces and the basic principles to be respected to reduce the risk of spreading the virus in these areas. The document also presents promising initiatives put forward by municipalities in Québec, Canada and elsewhere in the world aimed at promoting the safe and optimal use of parks and green spaces. Finally, some…

Whether for recreation or transportation, safe bike-riding is the result of interactions between individuals’ and environments’ characteristics, including natural elements, as well as man-made and developed elements. This TOPO’s main objective is to present the results of scientific writings concerning the association between the man-made environment, bike-riding and cyclist safety.

Some elements of the man-made environment promote safe bike-riding and thereby contribute to…

Highlights :

This briefing note introduces the road diet, an engineering technique that reallocates space on a street or road for other uses when they are over-built and have excess lanes. In what follows, we will present a definition, some study results and practical implementation considerations for road diets.

When applied with consideration for contextual details, it is generally agreed that road diets provide significant safety benefits for motorists, cyclists and pedestrians alike.

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This document is the final one in a series of five documents based on a literature review published in 2011. The four previous documents compared the effects of two approaches to urban traffic calming – the black-spots approach and the area-wide approach – on four determinants of health: road safety, air quality, environmental noise and active transportation. In this document, we will examine the effects of these same two approaches (described below) on health inequalities. This will enable…