Air Spaces: getting the measure of air

Air pollution is a pressing concern for those living with its effects and policymakers working to address it. Exposure to polluted air is shaped by inequalities, linked to poor housing, geography, and occupation; it raises significant health, social, and environmental challenges. However, responses are limited by fragmented data, research siloed within separate disciplines, and approaches that fail to capture air pollution’s full complexity. Our project takes a new methodological and theoretical approach to the challenge of how to understand air quality in all its multiple dimensions and centres people’s everyday experiences. We develop an interdisciplinary concept of air inequalities, integrating community experiences and activisms, scientific air quality measurements, and understandings of local environments. The methodological shift we propose pays attention to how data is generated and ways of integrating these methods (air sensor technology, how community activists and qualitative/creative methods ‘get the measure’ of a place as polluted). Air is simultaneously scientific, social, cultural, and political. Addressing it requires an interdisciplinary response. We bring together different disciplinary methodological and theoretical expertise: atmospheric sciences’ (AS) scientific air measurements, social work’s (SW) community co-production, heritage studies’ (HS) holistic community centred understanding of environments, science and technology studies’ (STS) on how people use/understand air sensor technology and sociology on inequality and everyday lives. By integrating these, the project offers methodological and theoretical shifts to inform both policy and everyday practices, centring community concerns. Based in Manchester, where air pollution is often five times above WHO guidelines (PHE 2019), the project uses a place-based, immersive approach that is essential to produce a multi-faceted understanding of air quality. Manchester’s challenges (transport, lack of green spaces, poor housing) are shared by many cities, making our methods and conceptual framework scalable and transferable. Project aims: 1. Develop a new understanding of air quality that integrates different disciplinary ways of knowing about air through interdisciplinary dialogues 2. Establish a conceptual framework of air inequalities, incorporating the relationship between domestic and outdoor air in multiple urban spaces. 3. Evaluate current air quality measurement methods and recommend changes to ensure they are accurate, accessible, and relevant to different groups/disciplines. 4. Strengthen community approaches to air quality, supporting local efforts to articulate concerns and engage more effectively with academia and policy. This research builds on a pilot project co-produced with communities, whose concerns shaped this project, which we have framed through four methodological Facets (drawing on Mason’s facet methodology, 2011). Using methods from multiple disciplines, walking interviews, guided walks, sketching and mapping, and indoor and outdoor air quality sensors, we explore different ways of ‘getting the measure’ of air. Key outcomes: A new concept of air inequalities that integrates community experiences with academic ways of understanding poor air to offer a transferable interdisciplinary approach. A shift in how academics and policymakers conceptualise and respond to air quality and air inequality. Sustained collaborations between academics, community groups, and policymakers, disrupting existing hierarchies and promoting inclusive practices. New frameworks for heritage professionals and communities to value and look after local environments through the lens of air. Development of technological community literacy in using trusted air quality technologies, enabling communities to make credible claims and influence over policy and behaviour. Reference: PHE. 2019. Public Health England; ‘Review of interventions to improve outdoor air quality and public health’.