Funding win to build healthier, more sustainable cities
A team led by Associate Professor Ben Beck will work with the Victorian Government Department of Transport and Planning, and colleagues in Canada to catalyse the implementation of bicycling networks for people of all ages and abilities, and lower urban speed limits. A/Prof Beck’s Australian team has been awarded $1.25 million from the National Health and Medical Research Council, alongside the Canadian arm of the project, funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research as part of the 'Healthy Cities Implementation Science Team Award' program.
The Building CapaCITY/É for Sustainable Transportation (CapaCITY/É) project will focus on better understanding what works where, for whom, and in which context, helping to accelerate on-the-ground action towards healthy, sustainable and equitable cities.
A/Prof Beck is the Head of the Sustainable Mobility and Safety Research Group at the Monash School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine.
"Bike riding and walking can improve personal health, reduce environmental impact, and, when we place equity front of mind, can also address numerous health and transportation inequities. But cities around the world are struggling to implement key infrastructure, such as protected bike lanes, that will facilitate a transformative switch to bike riding en masse," he says. "We know the community will to use active modes of transport is there, but we need to overcome barriers. We'll partner with governments to develop new frameworks that will better enable this."
For the Australian component, the Victorian Department of Transport and Planning are partners on the CapaCITY/É project, and collectively, the project will bring together a diverse range of stakeholders and implementers to understand barriers and enablers, and develop frameworks to enable successful implementation of interventions to support active and sustainable mobility.
"Findings from this project will be directly applicable to city planners developing new urban areas, who can apply learnings from this project to build for use in the design of more equitable communities from the ground up. However, retrofitting established suburbs with safe and protected cycling infrastructure presents very different challenges. This project is an exciting multidisciplinary international collaboration that will help get it right from the start, and identify effective interventions for those more challenging, established environments," said A/Prof Beck.
The CapaCITY/É brings together interdisciplinary expertise from across multiple domains including implementation science, urban health and policy, and sustainability transitions. Australian researchers include:
- Associate Professor Ben Beck, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University
- Professor Chris Pettit, City Futures Research Centre, UNSW
- Professor Helen Skouteris, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University
- Professor Rob Raven, Monash Sustainable Development Institute, Monash University
- Professor Evelyne de Leeuw, Healthy Urban Environments Collaboratory, UNSW
- Dr Patrick Harris, Centre for Health Equity Training, Research and Evaluation, UNSW
- Dr Darshini Ayton, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University
- Dr Brian Lee, City Futures Research Centre, UNSW
- Dr Mike Harris, City Futures Research Centre, UNSW
The Canadian team is led by Professor Meghan Winters from Simon Fraser University, Professor Marie-Soleil Clouteir from Institut Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique, and Associate Professor Daniel Fuller from the University of Saskatchewan. The Canadian team have secured CAD$3 million for the Canadian component of CapaCITY/É. The project runs from 2023 to 2028.
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