TRA:WELL - Transport & Wellbeing

A high percentage of children around the world currently do not reach the WHO recommended level of physical activity, which is essential for children's physical and mental health and cognitive development. They increasingly spend their leisure time indoors instead of moving independently outdoors. The dominance of motorised traffic, the lack of child-friendly infrastructure and the lack of open spaces reinforce the effect of domestication. This is reflected in a decline in active mobility on school and leisure trips. Reversing these trends requires deeper insights into mechanisms of behaviour change, perceptions of the built environment, mobility-related decisions and the impact on children's well-being. The TRA:WELL project investigates how active and independent mobility is related to children's well-being. In doing so, the subjective perception of the built environment is analysed and a child-centred perspective is used to work out how urban environments can promote child-friendly mobility. The study takes into account the overall physical activity behaviour of children and shows how active forms of mobility contribute to the fulfilment of physical activity recommendations. At the interface of quantitative and qualitative methods, students develop a child-friendly method to describe the complexity of mobility-related decisions. The project results shed light on important arguments in the context of child-friendly mobility for parents and decision-makers and provide in-depth insight into the child's perspective. From a scientific perspective, valuable data and methods are generated. Through its transdisciplinary approach, the project makes an important contribution to the intersectoral cooperation of transport/mobility and health.