Shared micro-mobility options are entering European cities, although at different rates. While the first insights about usage patterns, sustainability outcomes and equity effects start to accumulate, there is an emerging need for cities to develop a strategic view on the deployment of these new mobility options: How can shared micro mobility (SMM) options best be combined with existing transport systems to increase accessibility for all and add to sustainable transportation solutions? In this context, COCOMO aims to provide insights into: 1. How SMM are combined with existing travel modes within trips and longer term travel patterns and what implications this has for sustainability (VMT and greenhouse gas emissions); 2. How SMM interact with existing forms of travel in public space and how this impacts on the attractiveness and accessibility of these modes; 3. How travel implications of (see 1.), and access to SMM mobilities (see 2.) differ between geographical contexts and socio-economic groups, and what impacts this has on equity and inclusion. Based on these insights, COCOMO engages in co-creation with users and stakeholders in order to develop design and planning guidelines for sustainable and inclusive implementation of shared micro mobilities.

There is a proven evidence base for the benefits of both walking and art on physical health and mental wellbeing. Our project addresses the lacuna between the arts and those working to promote walking well in the wider community. Walking organisations need rapidly to find new ways to support their members during social restrictions, and to diversify membership to support more people to walk well in and beyond a pandemic. COVID-19 poses an unprecedented challenge to cultural organisations with the need to rethink practices due to physical distancing. Responses to lockdown have created the opportunity to understand how creative walking activities have been and could be used to mitigate isolation and anxiety, maintain health and wellbeing, enhance social connectivity, and facilitate cultural empowerment. This project will deliver a significant contribution to the understanding of, and response to, the COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts, generate new data about a key activity, and innovate arts resources for rapid implementation to support health, wellbeing, resilience and cultural participation. Collaborating with partner organisations, artists, cultural workers, and residents, the project will capture: a) the walking experiences and creative interventions of people during COVID-19 restrictions. b) the 'lockdown' work of artists using walking activity within conditions of restriction. c) the potential of the arts to sustain, encourage and more equitably support walking during and recovering from a pandemic. Key deliverables include: i) a new data set and report on walking experiences and creative approaches to walking well and safely ii) a curated digital gallery of creative walking models, open-access Walking Toolkits and piloted prototypes iii) a Cultural Walking Summit iv) three peer-reviewed articles v) a new cross-sectoral partnership.

It is widely recognised that low density development is unsustainable and generates significant Green House Gases (GHGs). Nevertheless, most UK development is built on greenfield land where public transportation is poor and services are scarce. If the UK is serious about 'net zero', then new ways of planning and developing are urgently required. 'Urban retrofit' is defined as repairing existing places by adapting urban form to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions, protect the environment and support sustainable lifestyles. Changes to the layout of neighbourhoods are starting to be delivered, including via infrastructure programmes such as separated bike lanes, planning policies that encourage high-densities, and community-based projects like urban greening. The problem is that implementation is slow, fragmented and increasingly controversial. Investment often flows to affluent places rather than communities in the greatest need of support, and the principal actors in the UK's planning and development systems face various delivery challenges. Planning authorities struggle with institutional inertia and time-limited funding meaning retrofitting is poorly coordinated. Property developers stick to tried and tested business models to reduce risk resulting in a preference for low density, mono-use greenfield development rather than mixed-use projects on brownfield land. Communities face capacity challenges and place adaptation is often contested. If the UK is to meet its net zero targets and achieve a just transition, then urban retrofitting must be prioritised, equitably directed and implemented more effectively. URBAN RETROFIT UK will be led by the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence and coproduced with international, national and local planning, property and community partners, including in five UK core cities - Belfast, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow and Sheffield. Its aim is to examine the barriers to urban retrofitting, challenge the prevailing growth-logic of planning and development, and coproduce a conceptual framework plotting the critical points of intervention needed to scale up retrofitting through planning and development systems. The objectives are to: Conduct a global evidence review on urban retrofit informed by international partners and a study tour. Identify and investigate a series of urban retrofit cases in collaboration with local authority partners to understand what is working and pinpoint where implementation gaps could be closed. Work with partners to understand where the spatial inequalities of current urban retrofit practice lie and how the barriers to 'scaling up' effective and equitable practices could be addressed. Establish an international URBAN RETROFIT HUBS network between UK and Global North cities facing comparable place-adaptation challenges and initiate new two-way learning partnerships with Global South cities where the context for urban retrofit is different but opportunities exist to explore lesson-sharing. To maximise knowledge exchange across sectoral boundaries and between places, URBAN RETROFIT UK's findings will be shared throughout the project at jointly delivered events with UK partners and internationally via the URBAN RETROFIT HUBS network. New theoretical perspectives on the UK's planning and development systems and coproduced empirical evidence on urban retrofit will be shared through an international symposium and evidence review, a report, film and magazine articles, and academic outputs including articles and an edited book.

Mobility, wellbeing and the built environment: Wellbeing in later life is linked to the maintenance of independence, physical mobility itself and the sense of being able to get about. Mobility is vital for accessing services, resources and facilities, for social participation, and for avoiding loneliness. Thus mobility has been described more broadly as 'engagement with the world'. The design of the built environment has a key role to play in enabling - or frustrating - mobility. Thus appropriate design or redesign of the built environment can expand horizons and support wellbeing. However, this project focuses on complements or alternatives to physical design or redesign of the built environment. Design and adaptation are time and resource intensive. Many well-understood mobility barriers remain in place because of budget constraints. Design of the built environment is just one the determinants of mobility and wellbeing. Any one environment cannot meet all needs at once, and needs can vary even for an individual, as people pass through key physical and social transitions which may alter mobility and wellbeing. Based on participatory research, this project aims to create a suite of options and tools which may be able to meet contrasting needs, support mobility and wellbeing, and do so more quickly and affordably than adapting the built environment. The research aims to: 1) Explore mobility and wellbeing for older people going through critical but common life transitions; 2) Investigate and address variation and contradictions in needs of different groups of older people (and even for single individuals over time), and between different built environment agendas; and 3) To co-create practical tools which can act as complements or alternatives to redesign of the built environment. After a foundation stage the work will commence with interviews with national experts and stakeholders. We will select three contrasting local areas in which to base the rest of the research, and interview c15 local stakeholders in each area. We will then start a pioneering quarterly tracking study of mobility and wellbeing, working with c120 older people in the three sites who are experiencing critical but common life transitions such as losing a driving license, losing a partner, or becoming a carer. These transitions are often seen as key points for deterioration in mobility and wellbeing, and as key points for support and intervention. We will then work with a series of small groups of older people in workshops and co-design sessions, to explore the potential for interventions as alternatives and complements to promoting mobility and wellbeing via redesign. Each will involve a series of day-long meetings between researchers and older people, over about a year. One set of workshops will explore how well 'crowdsourcing' and Participatory Geographical Information Systems can add to and collate information about mobility wants and needs and barriers. Another will involve older people with varying interests in relation to the built environment, to explore conflicts and the potential for consensus on some issues. There will be co-design workshops with older people to explore mobile technologies based on SmartPhones, to help people avoid key blockages to mobility in particular areas. Other workshops will work with mobility scooter users, and manufacturers and those whose mobility may be threatened by scooters, to explore the feasibility of adapting scooters to reduce problems. The impact of participation itself will be tracked. Project outputs will include: a project website, accessible annual interim and summative reports to project stakeholders and others, a summative report, articles for academic journals across team member disciplines, trade press articles for relevant professionals, potentially video or new media, a local stakeholder and older person conference and national 'Roadshow', as well as other dissemination events.

Recent research shows that remaining active is a vital component in healthy ageing and that exercise provides protection against mental decline in old age. People are more mobile if they live in an appropriate environment, one that is safe, accessible and has good services. To date, much guidance has focused on overcoming barriers in the environment, such as steps without handrails or poor quality lighting. Removing such barriers is important but this approach alone will not encourage people to be more active. We need to understand the positive qualities that encourage people to go out, remain mobile, and give them pleasure into very old age. Our proposal builds on growing evidence that mood and emotion influence people's willingness to be active, which is in turn influenced by the experience of different environments - the 'mood' of one place versus another. Places need to be attractive, in order to support positive moods, and to draw people into them. Some places offer peace and quiet, others offer sociability, excitement or a sense of fun. The environment needs to offer different opportunities according to how people feel at the time. Well-designed places don't automatically put people in a good mood, but we think places that match the emotional needs of the moment contribute to a self-reinforcing virtuous cycle. If the mood of a place is right then people will get out and about, feel better, take better care of their environment, and think of their environment more positively. Positive emotions broaden people's awareness and encourage them to think and act in novel ways, and to be more curious and exploratory, both mentally and physically. Environments that encourage positive moods affect how competent people are at carrying out everyday tasks, such as preparing meals, going to the shops or planning an outing. People who feel competent are more likely to focus on the positive, to feel well, to make healthy choices, and to be more mobile. We will draw on our studies of the patterns, causes, and effects of health conditions among groups of people (epidemiology), combined with techniques in neuroscience involving brain imaging. We will also work in equal partnership with older people, including stroke survivors and people with dementia, to design together better environments. This innovative combination of approaches will help us to deliver new ideas about the design of places that support positive emotions, reduce anxiety, and encourage people to be more active and mobile, long into old age. Well-designed and maintained environments should make mobility an easy, enjoyable and meaningful choice. Our research is structured around four Work Packages involving: (1) designing together with older people, (2) examining data from recordings of neural signals (EEG) while people are moving through different environments, (3) studying information from a large group of older people born in the 1920s and 30s, to understand patterns of environment, activity and health over their life course, and (4) working with partners to evaluate and share our results and develop illustrated, user-friendly guidance on how to provide better environments in future. Our team of researchers has expertise in environment, health, wellbeing, social policy and collaborative design, with an excellent track record of past Research Council and other major grants. We have experience in providing design guidance for the built environment, innovative approaches to measuring people's responses to their environment, working with them to understand their preferences, and analysing the implications of results. We also have experience in mapping important aspects of the environment. To maximise the impact of our research, we will mobilise our ongoing partnerships with policy-makers at national and local government level, with professional bodies, and with third sector organisations supporting older people and age-friendly environmental design.