In 2022, Ireland played host to the Walk21 Conference. Since the conference, a team at TU Dublin has developed a Legacy project titled ‘Sustain’. Sustain will act as an umbrella for projects such as TU Dublin’s latest research ‘CRAWL’.
Using TU Dublin’s campus locations as a testbed, the research team will draw upon the expertise of an already established multidisciplinary national advisory committee on walking and liveable communities. The research team will work with campus communities, local authorities and stakeholders from surrounding neighbourhoods to create action research programme to increase the walkability and liveability of the campus neighbourhoods.
Crawl Research
Increased walking and the resulting social interactions have benefits for population and planetary health and are essential for children and older people’s independent mobility and a well-functioning public transport system. Identifying barriers and co-creating contextual solutions to be evaluated with community stakeholders will inform practice in this multidisciplinary space.
An air quality monitoring project will be set up by the research team as an anchor for engagement and community stakeholder recruitment. This topic has been selected as it is relevant as both an outcome (tailpipe emissions) and a determinant of people’s walking/ mobility behaviours (discomfort when walking when air quality is bad).