PhD Built Environment, Inclusive Mobility and Accessibility, and Healthy Cities

Updated: almost 2 years ago
Deadline: 01 Jun 2022

Call for applications: Full time Double Degree PhD position (2022- 2026)

Research Theme: Built Environment, Inclusive Mobility and Accessibility, and Healthy Cities

We are seeking to recruit a candidate wishing to obtain a double doctoral degree involving collaboration between the University of Groningen (The Netherlands) and Tampere University (Finland). The selected candidate will have to start at the latest on 1st of November, 2022. The candidate will stay and work at both Universities (the first two years in the Netherlands and the last two years in Finland). Upon successful completion of the programme, the candidate will receive a double degree from the University of Groningen and the Tampere University.

Theme description
The appointed PhD student will work on a doctoral research project proposed by themself on a topic related to the links between built environment, inclusive mobility and accessibility, and healthy cities as described below:

Urban areas around the world are growing rapidly. Strategic transport and spatial planning of cities is required worldwide to keep up with this growth if these urban regions are to maintain productivity and quality of life (QoL). As discussed by the American Planning Association, the ultimate goal of planning is ‘‘to improve the welfare of people and their communities by creating more convenient, equitable, healthful, efficient, and attractive places for present and future generations”. Specifically, planning influences the development of cities and neighborhoods, and services and amenities, which determine where and how people work, travel, shop, interact, and in other ways live their lives. Therefore, planners need to understand environment, mobility, and accessibility correlates of health and QoL to enable planning for more healthy cities.

Recently, a growing number of studies have focused on the role of the built environment, mobility, and accessibility, which jointly affect people’s activity space, their health and QoL. However, to come up with evidence-based inclusive land use and transport policies, innovations, and interventions that could improve health and QoL in cities further empirical evidence is required.

A PhD project within this research theme might explore topics such as:

- the influence of objective and/or perceived characteristics of the built environment on actual/perceived mobility/accessibility and their ultimate effect on actual/perceived health and wellbeing
- accessibility and adaptation to innovative mobility services, interventions, technologies, and transport infrastructure and their influence on actual/perceived health and wellbeing
- innovative accessibility indicators and measures for inclusive Planning and/or for times of (climate) crisis.

The prospective PhD-student could focus on a specific age group (e.g. children, adults, older adults), gender, and/or geographical context or take a comparative approach (comparison between age groups, genders, or geographical contexts). The method could be an empirical quantitative, or a mixed qualitative and quantitative approach based on primary and secondary data collection and analysis. Longitudinal or semi longitudinal research design and the use of innovative research methods (e.g. virtual reality, the use of wearable sensors, big data analytics, etc.) for exploration of behavior, adaptation to innovations, and perceptions is encouraged.



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