IN-PERSON Manchester Livable Cities

Abstract

As cities encounter rapid demographic ageing, urban planners urgently need age-inclusive methods that capture how micro-spatial street environments shape older adults’ mobility, daily stress, and long-term well-being. This research-in-progress presents a mixed-methods, spatially explicit socio-spatial framework designed to explore how street-level environmental press affects individuals aged 65 and over across different urban wards. The empirical model bridges two distinct data scales, combining a localized participant survey (target n ≈ 400) with a segment-based physical street audit and secondary GIS analysis. While the survey captures subjective individual metrics including perceived stress, well-being, habitual walking patterns, functional capacity, and perceived safety, the environmental audit quantifies the physical landscape across four domains. These comprise a Street Mobility Stressors Index calibrated to an age-appropriate walking speed of 0.8 m/s; a Restorative Seating Index assessing bench provision a Visual Complexity and Restoration audit structured around eye-level greenery, frontage engagement, openness-enclosure balance, and structural compactness; and macro-environmental GIS controls covering crime, traffic noise, and terrain To maintain clear conceptual boundaries and prevent circular reasoning between environmental triggers and psychological outcomes, the audit protocol rejects subjective descriptors. Instead, it relies strictly on observable geometric and structural features to preserve an analytical firewall against subjective survey measures. Because participant anonymity prevents direct routes tracking, QGIS network buffers of 400 m and 800 m are deployed around reported proximate intersections to aggregate segment scores and link them to individual survey profiles. A 10-segment pilot audit has verified inter-rater reliability via intraclass correlation coefficients prior to full field deployment.