Several societal challenges such as “Health, demographic change and wellbeing” and “Smart, green and integrated transport”, are directly related to the project. It is well known that non-walkable, poorly planned urban environments are associated with physical inactivity and with air pollution. Such environments are linked to chronic illnesses including heart diseases, diabetes, obesity, some cancers, and poor mental health.
This project gave special attention to research into the links between spatial context and wellbeing of older people. It focused on understanding the emergence mechanisms involved both in walking and urban development, and therefore aimed to improve non-vehicle, pedestrian policies and tools. The project offered in-depth knowledge of age-related pedestrian behaviour and could be directly transferred to socioeconomic impact on spatial environment, preventing car-dependent urban sprawls in Europe and supporting older persons to remain active and healthy. A city that works for older people is one that would work for everybody.
As an urban designer at architectural firms in the USA and in Israel I have faced a huge gap between scientific knowledge in the field of city planning and the day-to-day practice of urban planners. Models developed in academia are based on vast knowledge of urban performance. Practical plans, on the other hand, based on intuition, assume very crude human behaviour resulting in unsuccessful efforts to determine urban evolution. From the start of my career, I was keenly interested in linking academic research back to practice, and vice versa. The predictive simulation tool proposed in this project address the needs of designers in areas where the urban realm is poor. The results of this research will lead to technology transfer from the human-focused laboratory to the prototype of an automated tool that forecasts impacts of planning. Moreover, the research, with case studies in the heart of London, is highly relevant for local urban development.
This project resulted in six high-impact papers advancing the state-of-the art in cognitive science, urban planning, and related fields.
