Project overview

Co-Motion: mobility and well-being

Through the Co-Motion project, the Centre for Housing Policy led by Dr Mark Bevan is investigating the links between mobility and well-being among older people.

We all experience major changes in our lives, particularly as we grow older, and these changes can make a difference to mobility and well-being.  The project will work with older people in York, Leeds and Hexham who have experienced such changes.  This will lead to intensive co-design workshops with older people to create policies and tools to make this easier, as well as work with national and local stakeholders.

The Co-Motion project is one of seven Design for Well-being projects looking at ageing and mobility in the built environment funded from the EPSRC, ESRC and AHRC.

The consortium, which includes York Departments Computer Science, Health Sciences and the Stockholm Environment Institute as well as colleagues from the University of Leeds, University of Newcastle and Northumbria University aims to create a step-change in mobility and wellbeing in later life.  The work will include a longitudinal study of older people in York, Hexham and Leeds who have experienced transitions affecting mobility and wellbeing, and will lead into intensive co-design workshops with older people and local and national stakeholders.

Objectives

Our approach has five distinctive, equally ranking objectives:

  1. Transitions and time. We aim to explore mobility and wellbeing for older people going through critical but common life transitions such as losing a driving license, losing sight, losing a partner, becoming a carer or starting to use a mobility scooter.

  2. Consensus and contradiction. We will investigate and address variation and contradictions in needs of different groups of older people, and between different built environment agendas and guidance.

  3. Participation. We will work very closely with a relatively large and diverse group of older people and local stakeholders in the built environment, ageing and wellbeing. Older people and stakeholders will act not only as informants but as co-operators and co-designers.

  4. Complements and alternatives. In proposing interventions to promote mobility and wellbeing, we will focus on complements or alternatives to physical design or redesign of the built environment.

  5. Impact. In addition to concepts and knowledge the project will also provide a suite of tested models and prototypes: crowdsourcing and participatory GIS for mobility information gathering and analysis; deliberative methods in identifying consensus and priorities; tested prototype technologies to provide alternatives and complements to changes to the built environment; Initial evidence on the impact of prototype technologies on mobility and wellbeing.

Project Team

Co-Motion Team

The project team, led by Professor Becky Tunstall, comprises staff from the University's Centre for Housing Policy, York's Departments of Computer Sciences and Health Sciences and Stockholm Environment Institute, and the Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds; the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, University of Newcastle; and the Department of Psychology, Northumbria University.

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