Introduction

Walking has a key role in achieving the compact and 15-min city, improving public health, and reaching sustainability goals. However, whilst walking is placed at the top of the transport hierarchy in public documents throughout Scandinavia, in reality, walking as a mode of transport is consistently downplayed and hierarchically placed in the bottom of the transport hierarchy. Focus in the public and planning discourse is instead commonly on either motorised transport, public transport, or cycling, regardless of whether the focus is on city planning, logistics or safety.

Methods

To better understand why this is the case – as well as attempting to suggest solutions to levelling-up walking as a mode of transport – academics, policymakers, and practitioners from across Scandinavia were strategically selected to contribute with their knowledge through focus groups and individual surveys during 2021 and 2023.

Results

In the analysis of the material, it became clear that walking was largely viewed in the parallel perspectives of two fields: planning and safety. These fields coexist as disparate and disconnected fields, basing their work on different methodologies and input data, resulting in an incoherent understanding of walking as a mode of transport. However, the analysis also enabled the development of a thematic model: realising walking as a mode of transport, illustrating an ideal construct in which planning and safety perspectives work coherently.

Conclusion

The results suggest that there is a strong desire to level-up walking as a mode of transport and change the status and hierarchy in the transport system. However, to do so requires a more holistic and multi-disciplinary view.

Introduction: In recent years, the 15-min city concept has gained popularity as a solution for urban planning, emphasizing proximity to daily amenities accessible by walking or cycling. While commonly studied and implemented in densely populated cities, its application in other contexts remains limited. Simultaneously, Europe's older population continues to grow, highlighting the need to address their unique needs. This study examines the 15-min city from the perspective of older adults in the Swedish Arctic.

Methods: A mailed questionnaire was chosen to investigate the most significant daily amenities within a 15-min walk for the sociodemographic group. Responses were categorized into the six original categories of the 15-min city concept: Living, Working, Supplying, Caring, Learning, and Enjoying.

Results: Results included high responses for Supplying and Caring, with low mentions of Working. Additionally, two new categories emerged: Social, highlighting the importance of relationships with family, friends and neighbours, and Nothing, reflecting a lack of nearby services despite many respondents still engaging in daily neighbourhood visits.

Conclusions: This study offers a fresh perspective on the 15-min city, emphasizing the importance of integrating residents' experiences and preferences into urban planning, especially in smaller communities, to support active ageing and overall well-being. The findings offer valuable insights into key destinations for the older population, which can help enhance accessibility to essential facilities and promote proximity-based planning.

In the last decade, the Nordic countries have adopted policy strategies in response to population ageing. However, a recent study highlights a critical blind spot in these policies, concerning the older adults living in the arctic regions of Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Iceland. In this blogpost, we explore the significant gaps identified in the study and underscore the urgent need for inclusive policies that recognize and address both the diversity of the older adult population and the unique challenges faced by older adults in the Arctic.

In the last decade, policy strategies were adopted in response to population ageing in the Nordic countries. Governmental actions have to be evaluated in terms of their efficacy. The objective of this article is to identify and review the policies related to age-inclusive outdoor spaces in the Arctic regions of Nordic countries. Our analysis focuses on central government white papers that address the older adults in Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Iceland. A review of such policy documents provides insights into the predominant understandings of older adults and healthy ageing. Moreover, such analysis may identify “blind spots” in the national policies, especially regarding the sparsely researched northernmost and rural Arctic territories. Our results demonstrate how the older populations in the Nordic Arctic and their access to outdoor spaces are addressed in the policy documents. We found that with few exceptions, the older people of the rural Arctic is strikingly absent in the Nordic national governmental papers. Moreover, access to outdoor spaces is mentioned in general terms, and specific challenges of the rural Arctic context, such as the harsh climate, long winters and geographical distances are not addressed. The noticed omissions might be the result of “urban-rural”, “south-north”, “indoor-outdoor”, and “generalisation” biases.

Older residents' ability to move safely and independently throughout the year is critical to maintaining quality of life and function and postponing disability. There are few studies of environmental determinants of outdoor mobility for older people in rural areas, and even fewer cover the Nordic Arctic areas and its winter season.

Our project investigates how people aged 70 or older perceive their lived urban and rural mobility space and the impact of environmental conditions commonly found in Nordic Arctic settlements in wintertime. The methodology is an exploratory mixed-method design, where we use a tailored questionnaire followed by focus group interviews to collect more specific data. Three regions of Finland (Lapland, Kainuu, Northern Ostrobothnia), two regions of Sweden (Norrbotten, Vasterbotten), and the whole of Iceland are covered.

In this presentation, we will share our experiences and development of the methodology for the data collection. The questions must be expressed and understood similarly by respondents across Sweden, Finland and Iceland, and also across diverse residence typologies, for example, urban or rural. Hence, the wordings, definitions, contexts, and typologies of places are currently discussed within the research group and will also be an essential issue addressed during focus group interviews later in the project. Expected outcomes, such as tailored questionnaires and new knowledge, can be used to create safer outdoor environments and public spaces for older people living in the Nordic Arctic.

Background

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is considered a heterogenic syndrome with systemic effects, including muscle dysfunction. There is evidence of postural control impairments among individuals with COPD, partly related to muscle weakness. However, research is scarce regarding the other underlying systems of postural control, such as the visual, somatosensory and vestibular system. The aim was to compare postural control, as well as the motor and sensory systems, between individuals with and without COPD.

Methods

Twenty-two participants with COPD (mean age 74.0 ±6.2 years) and 34 non-obstructive references (mean age 74.9 ±4.9 years) participated in this cross-sectional study. Postural control was assessed with center of pressure trajectory of postural sway in quiet as well as a limits of stability test, calculating mediolateral and anteroposterior amplitudes for each test. Assessment of function in the motor system included maximum hand grip strength, as well as maximum strength in muscles around the hip, knee and ankle joints. Visual acuity, pressure sensibility, proprioception, vestibular screening, and reaction time were also included. Data was compared between groups, and significant differences in postural control were further analyzed with an orthogonal projection of latent structures regression model.

Results

There was a significantly increased sway amplitude in the mediolateral direction in quiet stance on soft surface with eyes open (p = 0.014) as well as a smaller anteroposterior amplitude in the limits of stability test (p = 0.019) in the COPD group. Regression models revealed that the mediolateral amplitude was related to visual acuity and the burden of tobacco smoking assessed as pack-years. Further, muscle strength associated with anteroposterior amplitude in limits of stability test in the COPD group, and with age and ankle dorsal flexion strength among the referents. Besides for lower ankle plantar flexion strength in the COPD group, there were however no significant differences in muscle strength.

Conclusions

Individuals with COPD had a decreased postural control and several factors were associated with the impairments. The findings imply that the burden of tobacco smoking and reduced visual acuity relate to increased postural sway in quiet stance, and that muscle weakness is related to decreased limits of stability, among individuals with COPD.

From March 2020, regulations and recommendations were implemented in Sweden to reduce the spread of COVID-19, which included limitations to public life. Overall, these sought to reduce activities that brought people together and in so doing, transitioned the relationship between cities and people into a new paradigm.

The study explores public usage of an Arctic city during the pandemic to understand how COVID-19 altered people’s ‘social life’. Data was collected in the Arctic city of Luleå, by structured questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. These indicate that: 1) a significant reduction in city visits, 2) multi-faceted city visits were reduced to single task based visits, 3) a significant reduction in leisure based activities, 4) an increase in digitalization of work, retail and leisure activities, 5) perceptions of responsibility, guilt, boredom and minimizing social networks were reported, and 6) post-pandemic, people questioned the ability of cities to bounce back.

The survey and interviews show that in the Arctic city of Luleå, restrictions put in place to reduce spread of the infection had a significant impact on public life and use of the public realm, which is in accordance with research from outside the Arctic.

The conclusion is that in the short term, the role of urban centres in daily life was reduced and the role of digitalisation for work, goods and services was rapidly advanced. However, the research also shows that the ‘social dimension’ of Arctic cities - to see other people and take part of civic life on site - was not easy to replace and is valued by the community.