Air pollution is often portrayed as something that affects entire cities. In fact, levels can vary enormously over just a few metres.

Our research shows that one of the greatest challenges for academics is not simply measuring air pollution, but making it visible and meaningful enough for people to recognise how it shapes their everyday lives.

Traditional air quality monitoring relies heavily on fixed monitoring stations, which are positioned at specific locations around a city. These stations provide highly accurate and valuable measurements, but they can only represent conditions at a limited number of points.

Air quality varies significantly across environments. It can also change dramatically over short distances and timescales depending on things like traffic volume, street layout, weather conditions, and local or regional sources of emissions. So, two people travelling along the same route at different times of the day may experience very different levels of exposure to pollutants in the air.

Combining scientific methods with creative approaches can help people better understand environmental issues that are otherwise difficult to........

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