The term “Smart Cities” conjures up ideas of good urban planning linking with Internet and communications technology. But how can it be smart if it is not also accessible and inclusive for everyone?

The smart city is about connecting technology with urban planning. But will it solve all the accessibility and inclusion problems?

Women, children and people with disability face difficulties accessing public space. This is because of safety concerns and physical barriers in the built environment. But public space must be welcoming and meaningful for all citizens. This is where community-led activities in designing public space becomes important.

Two researchers looked at digital technologies to see how they could help reframe public space design to be more inclusive. Technology should go beyond data collection to playing a central role in promoting social responsibility. Their research established a framework for creating inclusive public spaces based on site visits and users’ opinions.

The research study emphasises the importance of involving citizens in the governance of public spaces. They provide valuable data and insights about the quality and use of these spaces.

The title of the article is, The Use of the Smart Technology for Creating an Inclusive Urban Public Space.

From the abstract

Urban public spaces should be about community building, physical and mental well-being, social interaction, civic engagement, citizen participation, and economic vitality. However, low-income individuals, women, children, and people with disabilities often miss out. The paper discusses:

A framework of eight indicators: spatial distribution, typology, facilities and services, green and humid areas, governance and management, safety, user categories, and user satisfaction.

Involving citizens in leveraging smart technology for monitoring, providing real-time information and services improves facility efficiency, and creates an eco-friendly environment.

This paper promotes the development of an urban public space that caters to the diverse needs of the community, fostering a sense of belonging and well-being for all.

London’s Smart City Strategy

The aim of a smart city strategy is to improve the wellbeing of residents, social life and economic welfare through technology based interventions. Although technology offers several benefits for more inclusive and liveable environments, there are also drawbacks.   

Inclusiveness is embedded in the London Smart City Strategy, but there is still room for improvement.

A study of the strategy indicates that spatial inclusion is the major focus of the London smart city policy. A variety of assistive technologies promote inclusive housing, transport and health management systems. 

Improving citizen engagement through collaborations, increased transparency, and measures for preventing data misuse and misinterpretation will boost inclusiveness.

The London case study highlights the potential barriers in implementing inclusive strategies for smart cities in practice. The valuable lessons may provide good information for other cities. 

The title of the article is Inclusive Smart Cities: An Exploratory Study on the London Smart City Strategy.

Smart cities: a revolution?

City-wide technology offers hope for people with disability, but only if there is a shift towards universal design and inclusive solutions.

An article by Marcin Frackiewicz discusses the possibilities for smart and inclusive cities from a optimistic perspective of technology.

Street cameras to help keep people safe and automatic doors are commonplace technology. And newer ideas such as ridesharing are possible because of technology. Apps for real-time updates for public transport to minimise unpleasant surprises. So what else can we look forward to?

Frackiewicz claims that the use of data for fine-tune urban services enables a place for “undervalued voices”. He optimistically says smart city technology is equalising, by making sure that everyone thrives.

The title of the magazine article is, Breaking Barriers: The Smart City Revolution’s Quest for Universal Accessibility. It’s a flowery writing style with lots of poetic turns of phrase.

A book of long abstracts from the International Conference on Architectural Science and User Experience shows how varied this topic is. From Biophilic design and carbon reduction to environments that stimulate play and primary school design. One paper discusses the difficulties the architectural profession might encounter for new requirements to design inclusively. Time for some social science in architectural degrees?

The proceedings includes: active travel, housing, ageing, dementia, disability, digital technology, education and practice, air quality, landscaping, tourism, and more.

These short papers are from the 55th International Conference of the Architectural Science Association, 1-2 December 2022, Perth, Australia. Here is an overview of just one of the papers.

Architecture of inclusion

Architectural knowledge about designing for people with disability was held back by committing people to institutions and group homes. Consequently the teaching and design skills have not kept up with the times. The tendency is to conform to existing regulations, rather than being a driver of innovation.

New references in the National Standard of Competency for Architects around designing for disability require graduates to demonstrate these competencies. Using the experience of the inclusion of Indigenous competencies in the National Standard, this paper explores the difficulties the profession and teaching institutions may encounter around identifying people with lived experience working in architecture, or as design teachers.

The paper discusses the units of competency and relevance to building codes, standards and planning controls including barriers to access for all. In essence, educators and practitioners must draw on building and environmental sciences and social sciences in their preliminary work.

Skills in diversity equity and inclusion are not supported with legislation. The challenges for architecture courses is the lack of disability knowledge and Indigenous knowledge. University systems, structures and teaching competencies are challenged by these new requirements.

Architecture needs to move on from ‘risk’ in administrative processes such as contracts, to progressive themes including care for Country and equitable access.

The title of the conference proceedings is, Architectural Science and User Experience: How can Design Enhance the Quality of Life. It consists of short papers rather than full papers.

Access the whole book via the article, Regenerative Design Performance assessment: a critical review on page 504 on ResearchGate. It will show all the other abstracts. Otherwise you can purchase the book online.

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Sustainable Development Goals are intertwined. Lisa Stafford explains the connections in a paper outlining her co-designed research project. She takes a disability justice perspective on inclusive cities through the voices of people with disability.

Inclusion and equity are integral to achieving sustainable cities and communities. But the voices of people with disability are missing in the urban agenda.

A previous paper briefly explains the research design, preliminary work, and the co-design method.

Key findings

The five elements of inclusive communities need to be reflected in how communities and cities are designed and planned.

• Planning for human diversity
• All people-centred urban governance
• Equity, accessibility and ease are core bases
• Planning for connectedness
• Vibrant places and experiences

Graphic by Kylie Dunn

To achieve equitable outcomes means addressing the entrenched notion of ‘normal’ and the stereotypes of what constitutes ‘disability’. Fundamental to making communities inclusive is the ability to connect with nature and other people and place. Vibrant places provide experiences that are important to wellbeing and a sense of belonging.

Inclusive communities is a lived concept, not something drawn up in plans or policies. It is multidimensional and experienced in places. The legacy of ableist urban planning means that communities remain places of exclusion.

The title of the article is, The Makings of Disability-Inclusive Sustainable Communities: Perspectives from Australia. Note that Stafford and the research team prefer to use the identity first term “disabled people”. They acknowledge that some people prefer “person first” language of “people with disability”. The UN Convention uses the person first terminology.

From the abstract

The right to inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable suburbs is an aim of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11. The focus is on addressing race, disability, class, gender and age inequality and injustice by the year 2030.

Despite this interest in creating inclusive sustainable cities and communities, we still know little about what this means for disabled people. In this article, we address this gap through participatory qualitative research study.

The study, Planning Inclusive Communities, involved 97 people (9-92 years of age). More than 50% identified as disabled people from two Australian regions – Tasmania and Queensland.

The research revealed five core interrelated elements in “The Makings of Inclusive Communities”. These five elements reinforce the importance of interconnected social, economic, and built environment structures and systems in facilitating inclusion, and that inclusion happens in place and movement through everyday experiences.

The findings offer new insights through the voices of disabled and non-disabled people, around issues of equity, access, and inclusion. The research guides future urban policy and planning for inclusive cities and communities.

The links between urban design and physical and mental health are well established. So how do you take an evidence-based approach to health-promoting urban design and green spaces? Swedish landscape architects wanted to know how to translate existing evidence into design and looked to researchers to help. 

Researchers and landscape architects collaborated on a project using participatory action research methods. Researchers used existing evaluation tools and two case studies to test the processes. 

One case study used an existing park that was due for renewal. Citizens, politicians and planners were involved in collaborative activities. Design proposals were evaluated based on the feedback from the local stakeholders. This is how they discovered the most important design aspects to consider in the second part of the study.

Aspects such as safety, vegetation, water flow, and traffic management were considered in the design. Residents with homes and gardens next to the park were concerned that this would attract visitors from other areas. New users were apparently not welcome to “their” space.

The article explains the collaborative processes that involved the researchers, the landscape architects and other stakeholders. The Quality Evaluation Tool was used as the framework for the study. Some landscape architects found it took time to learn how to use the tool. Others found it wasn’t easy to use it either – they needed something simpler.

However, the tool was useful in knowing how to apply evidence and assist the design process itself. Overall, landscape architects said they had a better understanding of how their designs could promote health and wellbeing. 

The title of the article is, Health-promoting urban planning: A case study of an evidence-based design process.  There are reflections on participatory action research as part of the concluding comments.

Healthy View of Placemaking

An opinion piece on the Design Council website gives an overview of the study they did with Social Change UK. More than 600 built environment practitioners across the UK completed the survey. They found that healthy placemaking often sits outside mainstream housing, public health and placemaking policy. 

The article explains the economic benefits of healthy placemaking. The Design Council defines healthy placemaking as, “tackling preventable disease by shaping the built environment so that healthy activities and experiences are integral to people’s everyday lives.” Neighbourhoods that enable include:

• • Physical activity: To increase walkability in buildings and neighbourhoods and encourage healthy modes of transport
  • Healthy food: To improve access to healthier foods
  • Social contact: To design well-connected housing and neighbourhoods that provide access to facilities and amenities to reduce social isolation and loneliness,
  • Contact with nature: To provide access to the natural environment, including parks
  • Pollution: Reducing exposure to air and noise pollution.

This all adds up to compact, mixed-use, walkable and wheelable neighbourhoods with leafy streets and great parks.  

Measuring the benefits of universal design

Dr David Bonnett writes in an opinion piece for the Design Council, that health professionals need to step up to show the benefits (cost savings) of designing inclusively. Inclusive design contributes to our health and wellbeing, but these benefits are rarely measured.

In the UK new buildings, both public infrastructure and private homes, must incorporate basic access features. But older buildings are not under the same regulation. There are costs for refurbishing older buildings, but by now we should be calculating that cost more effectively.

The cost of improving these are borne by local authorities. Bonnet says, “Design professionals, highways engineers included, are open to influence, and access consultants and others can tell them what to do. But first, health professional must assist in devising a method for demonstrating the benefits of inclusive design in order to make the case. Concerns for health succeeded in a ban on smoking in public building almost overnight. Inclusive design – already fifty years in the making – has got some catching up to do.” 

Building health and wellness

We need healthy architecture – that is, architecture that supports human health and wellness. Louis Rice claims that human illness is related to the design of the built environment. Key issues are discussed in a book chapter that covers social, mental and physical health and “restorative” design. He proposes a “healthy architecture map” based on materials, environments, agency and behaviours. The title of the chapter is A health map for architecture: The determinants of health and wellbeing in buildings. Abstract is below.

There is more useful information and research in the book including a chapter from Matthew Hutchinson, The Australian dream or a roof over my head. An ecological view of housing for an ageing Australian population.  

The World Health Organization also links health and the built environment in the WHO Housing and Health Guidelines. It includes a chapter on accessible housing.

Health, Technology and Buildings: a review

Abstract: Research into health, particularly social and psychological health, is crucial. Ultimately, an in-depth understanding of social and psychological health will more than promote well-being.

Technology research is indispensable, particularly concerning health and the built environment, given the need to create holistic and supportive frameworks for well-being. Moreover, because literature reviews establish the foundation for academic inquiries, they provide valuable overviews for foresight into grey research areas, particularly multi-disciplinary research like health technology and the built environment.

Hence, this study aims to discover the existing themes on health, technology, and built-environment nexus subjects while revealing the grey areas and suggesting proactive areas for future research. The objectives drove this aim to:

1. investigate the implications of technology for the social and psychological dimensions of health;

2. uncover the likelihood of a nexus between health, technology, and the built environment; and

3. highlight new research perspectives for the concluding seven years of the SDGs (2024–2030).

The review results highlighted ten themes around which a nexus exists between health, technology, and the built environment; they also pointed out new research perspectives for the next seven years (up to 2023).

The title of the paper is, Health, Technology And Built Environment Nexus: A Systematic Literature Review .

Victor Santiago Pineda reflects on the Burning Man community which recognises that everyone has something valuable to contribute. It challenges the idea that some people are worth more than others. This in turn introduced him to the concept of radical inclusion. Pineda discusses this concept in relation to cities and Amartya Sen’s Capability Model.

Much of the chapter covers well trodden ground with the seven principles of universal design and more statistics to show the imperatives of inclusive practice.

Can we universally design a whole city?

Pineda relates his conversation with Kat Holmes the inclusive design champion at Microsoft. In her book she talks of the “Mismatch” where people who design society determine who can participate and who’s left out.

The tail ends of the population bell curve become invisible when governments aggregate figures. It’s at the local government level where planning is more nuanced with more of a focus on “outliers”. They are in a better position to take a universal design approach to their plans and actions. By definition, national policies are played out at a local level. That is, in communities where people live, not in a national or state policy document.

An easy to read chapter that includes discussion on climate change and examples and images of successful urban transformations.

The title of the book chapter is Radical Inclusion: The Key to Urban Transformation.

From the abstract

Fifteen percent of the global population has a disability, which will only increase with population ageing. Half of the world’s population live in cities and this is where we need to promote inclusion to address a rapidly changing demographic.

Disability is becoming increasingly common and cities must be transformed to be inclusive of everyone. The Capability Model argues that disability is created by barriers in the social environment and therefore requires social change. When barriers exist, inclusive communities work to transform the way they are organized to meet the needs of all people.

The radical inclusion is a framework aims to eliminate barriers that hinder individuals and communities from reaching their full potential. It goes beyond full participation to create inclusive systems that promote equity and resilience. Their aim is to remove barriers that perpetuate poverty, inequality, disempowerment, isolation, and exclusion.

Building the inclusive city

Most academic writing about inclusion, disability and urban design is based on Western culture and traditions. Building the Inclusive City, an open access book, covers a recent history of disability in city planning and the cultural context of a middle eastern approach. It brings together social sciences, politics and disability studies for an integrated approach to policy. There are three underpinning themes are:

• disability research needs a contextual position
• access and inclusion is both local and global
• planning education should apply a disability lens to the field

The book by Victor Santiago Pineda is downloadable in full or by chapter. It’s good to see this important book has free access. Pineda is based in California.

The full title of the book is, Building the Inclusive City Governance, Access, and the Urban Transformation of Dubai. Published in 2020.

From the introduction to the book:

This book is an anthropological urban study of the Emirate of Dubai, its institutions, and their evolution. It provides a contemporary history of disability in city planning from a non-Western perspective and explores the cultural context for its positioning. Three insights inform the author’s approach.

First, situate disability research in a particular place. Second, access and inclusion forms a key part of both local and global planning issues. Third, 21st century planning education should apply a disability lens to the empirical, methodological, and theoretical advances of the field.

By bridging theory and practice, this book provides new insights on inclusive city planning and comparative urban theory. This book is a story of how equity and justice are central themes in building the cities of the future and of today.”

Editor’s note: I travelled to Dubai in 2015 and found much of the new infrastructure very accessible. Air conditioned bus stop shelters were a nice surprise.