Age-friendly mobilities: A transdisciplinary and intergenerational perspective

With the proportion of people living in the world’s cities set to rise to 70% by 2050 it is becoming increasingly important to understand the ways in which urban areas accommodate people of different ages, including their mobilities. Current approaches to ageing and mobilities tend to adopt an approach that is premised on disciplinary stasis and relatively discrete categories of age. Policies such as The World Health Organisation’s ‘Age-friendly city’ initiative reflect a tension in addressing issues relating to ageing, in that on the one hand they purport to aim to encourage cities to work towards developing infrastructure and practices that allow people of all ages to meet their needs and wishes, but on the other hand appear to privilege the category of older age. This article reviews current literature on ageing and mobility and suggests that work emerging in ‘mobilities’ studies offers a transdisciplinary and intergenerational approach to mobility and ageing that reveals aspects of mobility experiences that are otherwise hidden.