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How can ageing and mobility research be best used in decision-making?

Are you a designer? Architect? Developer? Policy-maker? Planner?

In your use of research, have you ever wished that it was just a little bit simpler for you to find out what the latest outcomes are?  And you are always conscious not to cherry-pick the research to suit your position, but how can you easily find what is relevant to you?

Let’s take a step back; our cities are byzantine places, from the vast metropolises of London, New York, and Paris, to the ‘most liveable’ of Melbourne or Vienna. They bring together dense and diverse collections of people, buildings, streets, transport, wealth, poverty, entertainment, work and lifestyles. But two big challenges face our cities: the growing trend to urbanisation and the fact that people are living longer. Both issues will have huge impacts on our cities and cannot be ignored if we are to create sustainable urban environments.

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Council (EPSRC) recognised this challenge in 2012 when they opened the call for cross-council funding to create a step-change in interdisciplinary engineering, social science and design research for wellbeing in the built environment. The research projects were encouraged to take a whole systems approach to consider ways in which better design of the built environment could facilitate and enable mobility, physical activity and physical connectivity of older people within the community.

As these projects all draw to a close, the ARCC network is here to help you incorporate findings from this leading EPSRC-funded research when looking at the implications of our ageing population and their mobility needs in your particular niche.

And this is your chance to influence the presentation of the research, the language used, the format of the final products that the ARCC network will publish on your behalf, all intended to support the design of the built environment, and encourage mobility and socialisation for our older populations.

… After all, we’ll all be there soon enough!

Please register for our event on 4 April for your chance to influence how the findings are best presented to ensure this knowledge is used in decision-making.