Co-Creating Age Friendly Environments for Walking and Cycling in and around Oxford

Introduction

Co-Creating Age Friendly Environments for Walking and Cycling (Co-CAFE) is a project led by Tim Jones (Reader in Urban Mobility) with Ben Spencer (Research Fellow) and Tom Shopland (Project Administrator), based in the School of the Built Environment at Oxford Brookes University.

Co-CAFE works with a wide range of local stakeholders in Oxford city and surrounding areas to co-create more harmonious environments for walking and cycling for all ages and abilities using existing findings and recommendations from our award winning cycle BOOM study (funded by EPSRC, grant ref: EP/K037242/1).

cycle BOOM was a study to understand cycling among the older population and how this affected independence, health and wellbeing. 

Background

The notion of ‘Age-Friendly Environments’ developed by the World Health Organisation (WHO, 2007), and adopted as a framework for the cycle BOOM study, offers the potential to convey the notion of a more harmonious and democratic (i.e. accessible, equitable, inclusive, safe and secure, and supportive) vision for walking and cycling in the UK for people aged ‘8 to 80’ and engage a wide range of stakeholders in thinking how this could influence and impact policy and planning.

The topic is particularly important as decision-makers grapple with the impact of an ageing society whilst at the same time delivering policies and programmes to promote walking and cycling in order to improve health and wellbeing, and create a low carbon transport system.

read our aims and objectives