Optimising our future mobility for liveable, sustainable communities

How we move people, goods and ideas within and between our cities and regions is changing. Optimising mobility and accessibility requires the right infrastructure, including transport and digital technologies. For example, information and communication technologies are enabling different patterns of living with implications for where and how we live, work, and play. Therefore the way we invest in our infrastructure will shape the opportunities to sustainably lift the social and economic performance of New Zealand.

What is needed to support a successful lifestyle that is, for example, less dependent on physically moving people? Will the services and quality of the nearby neighbourhood become more or less important if people spend less time in further away workplaces? Would people be attracted to provincial centres if they could achieve affordable living in a quality, healthy environment, as well as staying connected with the wider world?

This seminar explored these issues, looking at how we can incorporate the determinants of liveability and wellbeing into imagining future mobility possibilities, and how people and communities respond to changing environments.

Presenter Dr Vivienne Ivory is a social scientist specialising in urban environments at Opus Research, Opus International Consultants Ltd. She brings a public health focus to her work examining links between residential environments, transport, and health and wellbeing; and how impacts might affect population groups differently. Vivienne also maintains a part-time research role at the University of Otago’s Wellington campus working in the multidisciplinary field of neighbourhoods and health, examining the relationships between where people live and their health.

When: Thursday 2 July, 7:30 – 9am