The official kickoff meeting of the project "GreenCity4Aging: The effects of urban green streets in the mobility, social integration, and ageism against older people" was held on May 18, 2023. This project, funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (Ref. 2022.03478.PTDC) and carried out in partnership between CIS-Iscte, ISTAR -Iscte and Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa (SCML), is coordinated by researchers Sibila Marques (CIS-Iscte) and Sara Eloy (ISTAR-Iscte).
In this kickoff meeting, the main strategic and methodological challenges of the project were discussed, as well as the tasks to be developed in the next three years. The meeting had the participation of the international consultants Moritz Hess (University of Applied Sciences, Niederrhein) and Willem Snel, as well as the researchers Filomena Gerardo-Ponciano (SCML), Inês Filipe (SCML) Miguel Ramos (University of Birmingham), Leonor Bettencourt (CIS-Iscte), Joana Mendonça (Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon), Luís Dias (ISTAR-Iscte), André Samora-Arvela (ISTAR-Iscte), and Mariana Montalvão e Silva (CIS-Iscte).
GreenCity4Aging is a project under the SocioDigital Lab label that aims to examine the effects of so-called "green streets" - streets that incorporate elements of vegetation and active mobility - on the mobility and social integration of older people. According to the project coordinators, there is a "special interest in understanding how the design of green streets can affect older people's perceived feelings of ageism and discrimination." With a multidisciplinary team that brings together psychologists, sociologists, architects, and computer scientists, this project aims to inform the design of "green streets," namely by considering their impacts on feelings of (in)security by the older population.
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