Active environments and vital cities: ‘Walkshop’ with lessons from the Low Countries

Purpose: Sharing the most recent knowledge about and lessons learned on active friendly environments from two countries with the rest of the world.

The Knowledge Centre for Sport & Physical Activity Netherlands and Vital Cities from HOWEST (Belgium) will go into the theory behind active environments, building blocks and design principles for creating an active environment. We will present our most recent knowledge on the topic and why inter-sectoral collaboration is important in creating an active environment.

The workshop (180 minutes) will be a combination of an interactive presentation on site and a ‘walkshop’ through the neighbourhood, performing an active environment scan together with the workshop leaders. During the walkshop, we will also reflect on how different user groups use and experience the environment, to give everyone equal opportunities to be active in public space.

Afterwards, we will have a group discussion about the results of the scan, and reflect on the learnings taken from both the theoretical and practical learnings from the workshop.

Learning Objective 1: Participants will be able to describe the basic concepts of an active environment based on the Physical Activity Friendly Environment Model from the Knowledge Centre for Sport & Physical Activity NL and the concepts of hardware, software and orgware in this context.

Learning Objective 2: Participants will learn how you can create an inclusive environment, making sure that everybody can participate equally, both in the design, as well as in the use of the public space for sports and activities.

Learning Objective 3: Participants will go outside and learn how to perform a scan of the neighbourhood on how active and inclusive the environment is, with the tools presented by Vital Cities and the Knowledge Centre.

Target Audience: Everyone who is interested in creating active environments and vital cities through sport and activity.