Land Use, Street Design, and Older Adults’ Active Travel: Uncovering Nonlinear Effects in Multi-Scale Convenient Living Circles

Promoting older adults’ active travel (AT) is important for healthy ageing, yet the optimal spatial units and scales for built environment (BE) interventions remain unclear. Existing studies often ignore the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem and fail to distinguish macro-scale land-use patterns from micro-scale street design under potentially nonlinear behavior–environment relationships. This study aims to clarify how multi-scale BE influences older adults’ AT and to identify the most effective intervention scale. Using survey data from 2494 older adults in Wuhan, China, we construct six behaviorally meaningful sliding units (5, 10, and 15 min walking network buffers and distance-equivalent Euclidean buffers), derive macro- and micro-scale indicators from GIS, census data, and street view images, and build separate Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) models with Accumulated Local Effects plots for interpretation. A model comparison reveals pronounced scale effects: network-based buffers systematically outperform circular buffers, and the 15 min walking network buffer emerges as the optimal intervention unit. Across all scales, BE variables contribute more to model performance than socio-demographic factors, and macro-scale attributes (e.g., land-use mix, facility density, and transit access) consistently outweigh micro-scale street features. Nonlinear effects and thresholds are identified for key density, accessibility, and streetscape indicators. These findings underscore the necessity of multi-scale analysis and support planning “15 min life circles” for older adults that prioritize macro-scale land-use and facility optimization, complemented by targeted, context-specific street-level improvements to create safe, age-friendly walking environments.