Promoting Independent Cycling for Enhancing Later Life Experience and Social Synergy through Design (PrICELESS Design)

Cycling can contribute to physical and mental health and wellbeing among the older population by providing an active means of independent mobility to connect with the community and engage in social activities. But whilst cycling accounts for 23 per cent of all journeys for people aged 65 and older in the Netherlands, 15 per cent in Denmark and 9 per cent in Germany, it represents only 1 per cent of all journeys in the UK. This research starts from the premise that older people in the UK are often portrayed as citizens who lack the capacity to cycle and that this translates into design guidance that fails to consider how the built environment could be transformed to support cycling amongst an ageing population.
As people age, cycling becomes more physically challenging, forcing many to stop. Some people do adapt to changing physical circumstances and continue to cycle in older age. However, many lack the desire to cycle because of risks associated with its practice in an unsupportive environment and fear of personal injury. Projects to improve cycle infrastructure coupled with the growth in availability of assistive technologies such as electric bicycles ('e-bikes') could have a significant role in creating opportunities for older people to return to cycling or prevent them from giving up. The aim of this research is to better understand how built environment and technological design is shaping the willingness and ability of older people to cycle, how they interact and experience the built environment when cycling, and how this affects their wellbeing. Attention will focus on elements of design at different scales from buildings, to neighbourhoods, to wider town networks and also on bicycle technology and equipment. The research will investigate the range of policies and programmes and guidance available across the EU targeted at promoting more inclusive cycling amongst the older population and compare this with activity in the UK. A range of existing UK data sources will be analysed to identify trends in participation in cycling across the in the UK and the extent to which recent projects and programmes are encouraging older people to cycle. A mix of innovative methods to understand the relationship between cycling in the built environment and wellbeing will be used with residents approaching later life (aged 50-59) and in later life (60+) across the Bristol, Oxford, Reading and Southampton areas. First, biographic ('cycling life-history') interviews will be conducted in order to understand the role of past experiences of cycling and the influence of life events such as family and social relationships, employment and wider social, economic, environmental and technological change; Second, mobile interviews and observation will be conducted with participants as they make a regular journey by cycle in order to capture their everyday experience of cycling and to measure how interaction with the built environment affects mental physical and mental wellbeing; Third, new and returning older cycle users will be invited to take part in a unique 8-week experiment to measure how their (re)engagement with both conventional and electric cycling in the built environment affects their physical and mental wellbeing.
A rich dataset incorporating qualitative (textual, cartographic, video) and quantitative (numerical measures of wellbeing) data will be used to develop a toolkit for use by policy makers and practitioners. This will advise how the built environment and technology could be designed to support and promote cycling amongst current and future older generations and provide evidence of how this could improve independent cycling mobility and health and wellbeing. The toolkit will include briefing notes linked to design guidance and a documentary video, made with participants of the study, distributed directly to policy makers, practitioners and stakeholder and made available on the Web with the aim of generating maximum impact.

Our ultimate objective is to execute ground-breaking research, not only for academic consumption, but also to co-produce practical tools with older participants. These tools will help educate policy makers and the public of how built and technological design affects the actual lived experience of older mobile citizens and their wellbeing. We will seek to identify practical ways that design of the built environment and technology can better support older people's cycling and wellbeing and disseminate this advice widely through a variety of different media. The proportion of older people is on the increase across the UK and Europe with serious implications for travel and the sustainability of the built environment as the demand for transport increases. This research will play an important role in ensuring that future generations in the UK are left with a legacy of good environmental and technological design that can contribute to enhancing later life and promote social synergy. There are three key sets of beneficiaries:
First, the PrICELESS Design study will be of interest to academics in the fields of urban planning and design, transportation/mobility studies, geography, gerontology and psychology interested in the links between mobility and emotion/wellbeing and the role of the built environment and technology. It will contribute to the development of theory and empirical bodies of work on wellbeing, mobility, ageing and the built environment, and be of interest to those involved in developing approaches to understanding and measuring how mobility and built environment design affects wellbeing. The combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches as part of an innovative mixed method study design (incorporating life history interviews, mobile ethnography and an experimental study to measure wellbeing) and ambitious approach to integrative analysis will provide valuable information on ways of researching with older people and presenting co-produced knowledge.
Second, the outputs from the project will contribute significantly to decision making by policy makers, designers, architects, planners and advocates wishing to promote cycling amongst the older population for health and wellbeing and social and environmental sustainability. These include government departments (e.g. Department for Transport, Department for Communities and Local Government and Department of Health), local transport and planning authorities, organisations representing older people (e.g. Age UK), cycling organisations (e.g. Sustrans), industry representatives (e.g Bicycle Association) and professional practitioners such architects/designers and developers (e.g. Design Council, RIBA). It will feed directly into policy debates that are currently taking place amongst cycling stakeholders about ways to 'democratise' cycling by including older people (as well as children, women and ethnic minority groups - groups who, up to now, have often been the focus) in discussions about cycling. More specifically it will put forward definitive ideas and examples about how the built environment and technology can be shaped to support cycling amongst the future older population.
Finally, the ambition is that the knowledge generated will not simply remain in the professional and academic sphere. The aim is for participants and stakeholders involved in the study to benefit directly from being part of the process of research and to feel they are playing an active role in the production of knowledge that will lead to positive outcomes. We will seek to empower them by inviting them to share this knowledge using various channels of communication and to help us to disseminate findings. There may be a realistic expectation amongst our older participants that there is unlikely to be major change on the scale desired to support their cycling mobility in the short-term but that the impact in the medium to long term will leave a positive legacy for future older generations.