Older Adult-Friendly Active Mobility Infrastructure Toolkits: Understanding How Older Adults Experience Poorly Designed and Maintained Infrastructure

Abstract:

This Perspective offers the view that planning and design guidelines based on ageing’s effect on a person’s mobility ignores how older adults actually experience the resulting mobility infrastructure. It begins with the interplay of three foundational tools for understanding how to support physical activity and active mobility for older adults: the Older Adult Typology of Physical Activity, Person-Environment Fit Theory, and the Life-Space Mobility Assessment tool. Based on both qualitative and quantitative work, the author identified nine characteristics of older adults’ experience such as insufficient capacity, uncertainty, and coherence. A description of specific experiences for older adults when using four groupings of active mobility infrastructure types –sidewalks, roadway crossings, public transit, and cycling infrastructure – provide additional inputs to planning and design for older adults.

Publications:

Older Adult-Friendly Active Mobility Infrastructure Toolkits: Understanding How Older Adults Experience Poorly Designed and Maintained Infrastructure (Perspective)

Authors:

CAROL KACHADOORIAN

Carol has a breadth of knowledge and expertise in transportation planning and operations, which began in Alexandria, VA, where she served as a transit analyst before leading the City’s first Office of Transit Services. After several years working with a family design-build company and at a major university, Carol returned to the transportation industry with the Washington, DC region’s transit agency. There, she worked in operations and communications before focusing on pedestrian and bicyclists' access to transit. Carol’s work with Toole Design from 2008 to 2020 focused on school- and community-based active transportation plans. She started dblTilde Collaborative in 2020, specializing in older adult mobility and wellness. She describes the motivation for this work this way: “At age 60, I began to consider what my professional and personal life would look like during the next 30+ years. Now in my late 60’s, I am working to improve mobility for people as they age.

Published:

July 2024

Keywords:

Older adults

Age-friendly mobility

Typology of physical activity

Person-Environment fit

Life-Space mobility