Work programme & results

AFOOT - Securing urban mobility of an ageing population

Background

Physical activity plays an important role for healthy ageing. Total daily physical activity can be increased by walking and cycling for transport. Especially older people spend most of their time in their neighbourhood. There is compelling evidence that features of the built environment have a crucial impact on physical activity in terms of accessibility of green spaces and the option to use public urban space as well as on the provision of social infrastructure and local supply. The renewal and revitalization belong to the most important spheres of activity of urban planning. Promotion of physical activity by urbanplanners may occur through plans that consider population density, diversity of land use, and street connectivity. Urban planning has further an important coordinating role for space related requirements. This is the starting-point of the AFOOT project.

First funding period (2015 - 2018)

In the three-year research process, document analyses from the perspective of urban planning and public health were carried out and interviews of public health authorities and spatial planning agencies additionally lead to a joint elaboration of indicators on the interface of public health and urban planning. Subsequently, workshops and role-playing games were performed to simulate the implementation of the theoretical framework.

The final product of the first funding phase are guidelines for intersectoral collaboration of local urban planning and public health departments. They support especially small and medium-sized towns to design age-friendly environments which foster walking and cycling in old age.

Second funding period (2018 - 2022)

Building on the results of the first funding phase, the work programme of the second phase comprises

(1) the implementation and evaluation of the developed guidelines for intersectoral policy actions of urban planning and public health to promote active mobility of older people and to enrich the guidelines with a field-tested toolbox,

(2) the integration of the perspective of the rural population of the Metropolitan region Bremen-Oldenburg by assessing key factors of the built and social environment in relation to active mobility habits of elderly people in a large cross-sectional study,

(3) the implementation of an urban transition lab in Ritterhude, a municipality of 14.680 inhabitants in the Metropolitan Region Bremen-Oldenburg. The urban transition lab will create a local platform for a joint assessment and problem definition, the development of a local vision and agenda to promote cycling and walking among elderly residents, small-scale experiments (i.e. tests of possible measures) and continuous monitoring and evaluation. The process is steered by a “transition team” formed by scientists from public health and urban planning and a local employee in the municipal administration.