Addiction, Treatment and Recovery

The past decade has produced research on relationships between neighborhood characteristics and health but few studies have specifically looked at how a neighborhood may play a role in shaping alcohol use and misuse. This study looked at the impact of the “urban built” environment – a reference to not only all the buildings of a neighborhood, but also the streets, parks, and public spaces within it – on recent alcohol use.

Researchers recruited 1,355 respondents through a random digitdial survey of New York City (NYC) residents, using structured interviews to both assess their alcohol consumption and determine their neighborhood of residence. Study authors then used archival sources to compile data on the “internal and external built” environments in the pertinent 59 NYC neighborhoods. A neighborhood’s “built environment” can be thought of as everything in the neighborhood but the people who live there. “Internal built” environment is defined as the internal characteristics of individual homes – such as the condition of plumbing, painting, kitchen equipment, water leakage, heating, etc. “External built” environment is defined as characteristics of the façade or structure Rundown Neighborhoods Contribute to Heavy Drinking of the home – walls, window frames, cracks, missing stairways, poor original construction, etc.

Results support a link between heavy alcohol use and the urban built environment. More specifically, people who lived in neighborhoods characterized by poorly built environments were up to 150 percent more likely to report recent heavy drinking than similar respondents in neighborhoods with better built environments. This study of the complex relationship between neighborhood characteristics and alcohol use points to the need for further examination.  The study did conclude that the quality of a neighborhood’s built environment may be associated with heavy drinking in urban populations independent of individual characteristics.

(Bernstein, KT, Galea, S, Ahern, J, Tracy, M, Vlahov, D: The built environment and alcohol consumption in urban neighborhoods. Drug and Alcohol Dependence 91:244-252, 2007).
Editors Ratings: S=2, V=2,

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