…at a conference on “aging, mobility and quality of life“. Couldn’t be more timely with all the discussion about ageing populations in quite some parts of the Northern hemisphere. Here in Finland the debate goes as far as to question our standard of living in the future due to population ageing. Somewhat related to such population trends (and the mainstream cluster discourse), Nikodemus Solitander just questioned why Finland would want to attract more knowledge workers given its overeducated population where one cannot find enough plumbers, construction workers, bus drivers and cashiers…
But back to transportation research, the conference reminds of some of the gender projects in transportation, e.g. of the World Bank, the European Commission, UNEP, ADB, IFRTD and alls sorts of other lovely acronym organisations. There is even a community of practice for people working in this field. Not as if these problems would have been resolved – far from it! – but it is time to take on also age discrimination as well as different mobility patterns on the research agenda.
Gyöngyi
