Author: Jane Bringolf

Vulnerable citizens in floods and fires

Climate change is bringing increasingly dangerous and catastrophic weather events. Floods and fires are a regular occurrence in Australia, but not with the frequency and intensity that we are seeing now. While there are standards for building evacuations and fire risk management, these were developed without thought for vulnerable citizens. And when people need to evacuate to a communal place of safety, there is no guarantee it will be accessible.

Residents of the Northern Rivers area of New South Wales are not new to flood events. But the floods are getting worse. A major flood event occurred previously in 2017 and four researchers decided to explore the experiences of people with disability.

We found people with disability and carers are more likely than others to be affected and displaced. Their needs are more immediate and urgent than most, and their mental health is more likely to be compromised.

Road Closed signs and a barrier of a road that reaches down to a river in flood.

Their findings show the profound impact and systematic neglect experienced by people with disability and their carers. A longer term recovery period is required for people with disability with tailored supports. Consequently, people with disability should be included in flood preparations and recovery efforts.

The title of the article is, Exposure to risk and experiences of river flooding for people with disability and carers in rural Australia: a cross sectional survey. It’s not a very accessible document as the format is in two columns.

Fire safety

The NDIS aims to support people to live independently in a home designed around their disability. This usually means a step free entry and modified bathroom designs. However, little, if any, thought is given to the design of fire safety and safe evacuation in an emergency. Some NDIS participants will need extra support to prepare for and react in an emergency.

“Fire safety systems must be considered as a total package of risk management, equipment, maintenance, training and fire and evacuation drills. …Where disabled or immobile persons are concerned, the importance of the total package cannot be underestimated”

house fire photo taken at night time.

Hank Van Ravenstein outlines the role of the NDIS in his paper, Fire Safety and the National Disability Insurance Scheme. The first part relates the history of the NDIS followed by technical considerations for safety. He argues that the National Construction Code regulations don’t fully address or reflect the needs and risk behaviours of NDIS participants.

If we are to take a universal design approach, if the fire safety regulations aren’t sufficient for people with disability, are they sufficient for everyone?

Bushfire safety

As cities grow and become more compact, some citizens feel the need to “go bush”. This usually means finding a forest haven amongst the trees away from urban living. Then there are those who have always lived in the bush and wouldn’t live anywhere else. But bush living is risky and can be costly in terms of lives and property. It is particularly risky for people with disability and consequently, a different risk assessment process is needed.

Despite fire and rescue authorities encouraging people to prepare for bushfires (and floods), many leave it too late. Some are unable to understand the instructions, or unable to carry them out.

A nighttime view of a major bushfire. The bright orange and red glow of the fire is reaching into the tops of the trees.

A paper by Bennett and Van Ravenstein spells out all the technicalities of fire prevention and control. They argue for a risk assessment approach to existing and proposed buildings for vulnerable persons. The aim of their method is to provide a consistent basis for assessment.

The title of their paper is Fire Safety Management of Vulnerable Persons in Bushfire Prone areas.

There is an related paper on vertical evacuation of vulnerable persons in buildings.

Making sure everyone can hear

According to Deafness Forum Australia, approximately one in six Australians has a significant hearing loss. Participants of any age in any learning situation might need some assistance to get the best learning experience. It could be a Zoom webinar or lecture, an in-person conference, or a roundtable discussion. The important point is, make sure everyone can hear.

Assistance can be as simple as sitting at the front of a lecture or presentation where lip reading can assist comprehension. Or it could be more complex with assistive listening devices and live captioning. Microphones also have a place as does minimal background noise.

Picture of an ear with sound waves

Most people lose their hearing after they have learned to speak, so they don’t learn Auslan (sign language). However, always check whether one of you participants or learners needs an Auslan interpreter. People who use Auslan often prefer to be referred to as Deaf rather than hard of hearing.

The ADCET website has more information on the impact of hearing loss. Although it is focused on school learners, much of the information is applicable in any learning or information sharing situation.

ADCET strategies for including people with hearing loss include:

  • Always speak facing the audience
  • Provide written materials to supplement lectures
  • Caption videos and provide a transcript
  • Keep hands away from your face
  • Choose venues with a working hearing loop or assistive listening devices
Adults seated at tables in a classroom setting looking forward to the instructor at the front of the room

Supporting participants online

COVID changed almost everything including being together in learning situations. In July 2020 ADCET surveyed disability practitioners from the tertiary sector to find out how this impacted their work. The result of this work was to develop a guideline for supporting Deaf and hard of hearing learners online.

Download the Guidelines from the ADCET website. They have specific instructions for using captions and transcripts and the different web applications that help the learning process. The free automatic AI captioning works adequately most of the time on Zoom. It can be activated in the settings.

The video below explains more.


Planning for gender inclusion

The notion that there are only two genders, female and male, has become a topic of discussion and research. So, there is a growing interest in planning and designing for people who identify outside this binary. But much of the research literature is based on the experiences of women. There is little research on people who identify as nonbinary, trans, intersex or genderqueer. However, in the meantime, some of the research on women’s experiences can act as a proxy for people who identify as nonbinary. The key issue is that gender inclusion is left out of planning conversations.

Masters student Carolyn Chu investigated the constraints women and nonbinary people face when using public space. These constraints have a profound effect on their health, daily living and safety. Chu wanted to understand gender differences in park usage, planning and design in Los Angeles parks.

Front cover of Planning for Gender Inclusion.

Chu says that planners should thing critically about gender by leveraging a feminist planning perspective. Participatory methods that favour marginalised voices in planning discussions are essential. And to explore creative design options for diverse populations across gender, ages, ability and housing status.

Key findings

• Women have diverse needs and opinions related to park amenities, services, and preferences.
• Women and nonbinary people are not the majority users of Lafayette Park. The most common uses for women park users were leisurely walking and supervising children. Very few women engaged in exercise or vigorous physical activity (other than walking) while using the park.
• In planning processes, as with other municipal processes, the loudest voices in a community often have disproportionately more power in decision making. These loud voices have historically been, and continue to be, the voices of white, middle-class, and cisgender people.
• Planners need to balance competing needs for space, especially in dense city neighborhoods such as Koreatown and Westlake where Lafayette Park is located.
• Parks are not just a place for leisure, but also settings for economic activity and shelter
• Women’s past experiences of harassment in public places have created anxiety and fear for their safety in parks. Women are careful about how they dress while using parks to avert unwanted attention on their bodies.
• Parks provision and staffing are chronically underfunded and embedded in broader political dynamics.

“The nonprofit planner urged that in order to build gender-inclusive spaces, women must be included in every step of the planning phase, from inception to funding, leading, outreach, implementation, and evaluation. They emphasized that gender inclusive parks are created at the time of park inception, early in the process, and cannot be “tacked on” after foundational decisions have been made.”


Title of the study is, Gender Inclusion: Gender-Inclusive Planning and Design Recommendations for Los Angeles Parks. The research is largely based around women’s experiences, but issues such as safety are shared by other marginalised groups. Community engagement is a core strategy for all aspects of planning and design. And that means more than holding the traditional town hall meeting.

Planning and Policy Recommendations

1. Think critically about gender by leveraging a feminist planning perspective that recognizes that people of all genders have multiple, intersecting, and dynamic identities that hold meaning and power.
2. Use participatory methods that favor marginalized voices, open planning discussions to a wider range of opinions, and make time for collective decision-making.
3. Build a network of diverse parks that can accommodate a range of different desires and partner with nonprofits to explore alternative stewardship and ownership practices.
4. Explore creative design and programming options that are designed with all abilities in mind and maximize limited space in inner cities.
5. Invest and fund our parks equitably with a particular focus on providing resources for communities that are park poor due to historically discriminatory planning practices.
6. Pursue further research on park users across the spectrum of gender, age, ability, and housing status.

Abstract

Urban planning theory and practice have created gendered environments that mainly privilege the needs of cisgender men. Women, nonbinary, and genderqueer people face various constraints on their use of public space which has profound effects on their health, daily living, and safety. This research study seeks to understand gender disparities in park usage, planning, and design in Los Angeles parks and offers recommendations to mitigate those disparities through improvements to planning processes.

Implementing universal design in public places

What and where are the problems when it comes to implementing universal design in public places? Three Swedish researchers decided to find out. The first step is to consider all the actors that have a role in creating public places and spaces. They all make choices based on particular strategies. Then there are inherent conditions: topography, the space itself, time pressures, cost, and materials. Each one of these can impact how different people might use and design the environment.

How buildings, walkways and public places are designed is based on choices and strategies, affected by laws and policies, but also by the practitioners’ knowledge and experiences.

A fish market in Sweden. Implementing universal design.

Knowledge of universal design is still limited among practitioners and even then, it is not understood in the same way. Perceptions that universal design is about access compliance further complicates matters. So how to change the mindset of practitioners? This is where the concept of diversity comes in. Old thought patterns of deviating from the norm have to be discarded as practitioners think of population diversity.

Aim of the study

The aim of the study was to identify the choices practitioners made during the urban development process. And then to find out what they need to better support the implementation of universal design. They used qualitative methods to find out and a quantitative analysis of the findings. The findings are presented in three sections:

  1. Critical choices and aspects – informal decisions also impact final result.
  2. Conflicting visions, goals and interests between departments and public and private actors.
  3. Critical recourses – supports and tools stakeholders need
aerial view of three people at a desk looking at a set of construction drawings

The paper concludes with 7 recommendations based on their findings.

The title of the paper is, Visions of a City for All. Resources, Choices and Factors Supporting and Impeding Universal Design in the Urban Development Process. It is a well written and clear paper. It has important information for all the stakeholders in urban design processes.

From the abstract

Despite laws, policies and visions to create cities and societies for all, barriers still exclude persons with disabilities from using buildings and public places. Our study aimed to identify choices made during the urban development process that include or exclude users in the built environment; how and when these choices arise during the process; and what is needed to implement universal design (UD) as a strategy and tool to secure all users equal opportunities in the built environment.

The study involved employees and private actors in city development processes. Four workshops were followed by qualitative interviews with key players. The analysis was based on qualitative data from workshops and interviews.

Aspects impeding and supporting UD and conflicting visions and goals were identified in all phases, as well as the need for tools to implement UD. The findings show that accessibility for all users is dealt with (too) late in the process, often giving rise to special solutions.

The findings also show how UD appears more clearly in remodelling projects than in new constructions. A strong vision from the start to build for all users clearly supports UD throughout the process. Other factors such as pre-studies that include human diversity, allocation of resources and experts’ early opinions also prove to be clear drivers for UD.

Overall, the findings reveal a demand for solutions that can maintain early visions and goals throughout the processes. We conclude by providing seven recommendations for addressing these challenges.

The Metaverse: inclusive and accessible?

The concept of the Metaverse is a continuous online 3D universe that combines multiple virtual spaces. It’s the next step on from the internet. It means users can work, meet, game and socialize in these 3D spaces. We are not quite there yet, but some platforms have metaverse-like elements. Video games and Virtual Reality are two examples. So, we need to keep a careful watch on developments to make sure the Metaverse is inclusive and accessible.

Another term for the Metaverse is digital immersive environments. It sounds science fiction, but this fiction is becoming a fact. Someone is designing these environments, but are they considering equity, diversity and inclusion? Zallio and Clarkson decided to tackle this issue and did some research on where the industry is heading.

Several companies are involved in the development of digital immersive environments. So before they get too far in development it’s important to define some principles for the design of a good Metaverse. Zallio and Clarkson came up with ten principles that embrace inclusion, diversity, equity, accessibility and safety.

10 Principles for designing a good Metaverse

  1. is open and accessible
  2. is honest and understandable
  3. is safe and secure
  4. is driven by social equity and inclusion
  5. is sustainable
  6. values privacy, ethics and integrity
  7. guarantees data protection and ownership
  8. empowers diversity through self-expression
  9. innovates responsibly
  10. complements the physical world
A young woman is wearing a pair of virtual reality goggles and looking towards the sky.

Their paper is insightful and provides some important areas for discussion and research. We need developers to consider the essentials of inclusion, diversity and accessibility. Zallio and Clarkson advise that designers can learn from the past to reduce pitfalls in the future. As the Sustainable Development Goals say, “leave no-one behind”.

Diagram showing the 10 principles for designing a good Metaverse.

The title of the paper is Designing the Metaverse: A study on Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Accessibility and Safety for digital immersive environments.

Synopsis of the paper

1. The Metaverse appears as the next big opportunity in the consumer electronics scenario.

2. Several companies are involved with its development.

3. It is extremely important to define principles and practices to design a good Metaverse.

4. Qualitative research pointed out to challenges and opportunities to design a safe, inclusive, accessible Metaverse that guarantees equity and diversity.

5. Ten principles for designing a good Metaverse embrace inclusion, diversity, equity, accessibility and safety.

From the abstract

The Metaverse is shaping a new way for people interact and socialise. By 2026 a quarter of the population will spend at least an hour a day in the Metaverse. This requires consideration of challenges and opportunities that will influence the design of the Metaverse.

A study was carried out with industry experts to explore the social impact of the Metaverse through the lens of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Accessibility and Safety (IDEAS). The goal was to identify directions business has to undertake.

The results indicated the nature of future research questions and analysis to define a first manifesto for Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Accessibility and Safety in the Metaverse.

This manifesto is a starting point to develop a narrative, brainstorm questions and eventually provide answers for designing a Metaverse as a place for people that does not substitute the physical world but complements it.

Caring cities are inclusive cities

Care is both a need and a service, but it is also a social value that helps qualify how services, assistance, and support are provided. The value of care aims to keep people feeling safe and maintains their dignity. And caring cities are inclusive cities. A policy paper for the World Summit of LoA narrow pedestrian street with market stalls and shops. A caring city is an inclusive city.cal and Regional Leaders at local government level proposes some thoughts on this.

A city that cares fulfils its human rights obligations as well as the needs and aspirations of everyone. Places and spaces should be available, acceptable, accessible, and affordable for everyone. This means city and community ecosystems need a new social contract to be caring. This contract should involve collaboration and be based on respect for people and the environment. 

The policy paper discusses the challenges and sets some recommendations for local and regional governments and some points on taking local action. This paper will be of interest to policy makers in all levels of government. 

Enabling Environments for Local Action

“The responsibility for caring extends across all of government. Local and regional governments need to be supported and enabled to make the necessary transformations in favour of caring systems. To this end, this paper recommends taking the following actions at the national level:

a. Enact adequate, inclusive regulatory and policy frameworks establishing the basis for green, sustainable, and accessible public services and infrastructure

b. Sustain adequate transfer and allocation of financial resources to strengthen local-level technical capacity and enable efficient implementation.

c. Establish the legal foundations to institutionalize meaningful participatory and multi-level governance that considers the whole of society, moving past political alliances and promoting government accountability at all levels.”

Joint way forward

Governments at all levels need to share responsibility for creating caring systems by collaborating with communities. The policy paper recommends establishing strong partnerships and collaboration to enable social change. Here are some of the key points: 

        • Care is a human right and a public good and universal access to it
        • Establishing collaborative platforms and social dialogue
        • Challenging the gendered division of labour of paid and unpaid care work
        • Respect for local and indigenous knowledge
        • Accessible and ethical information management

The title of the policy paper is Caring Systems and was presented at the UCLG World Congress and Summit of World Leaders held October 2022 in Korea.

UCLG = United Cities and Local Government.

Measuring transport accessibility

Transport planners are guided by regulations related to mobility, but accessibility requirements relate to what people can achieve.  Accessible transport systems cannot be measured objectively like length or weight but rather by what it enables users to do. So we need a way to merge accessibility measures with infrastructure measures. But how do you measure transport accessibility? Front cover of the discussion paper on measuring transport accessibility. The title is The Accessibility Shift.

Jonathan Levine presents some interesting concepts about accessibility and mobility in his discussion paper. He explores the conceptual barriers to shifting transport planning from mobility to accessibility. Levine also presents a technique for analysing project-level accessibility analysis. 

His thoughts highlight the different goals of accessibility and mobility and how they can be brought together. Transport rules and regulations are the current guiding tools focused on mobility. They are about traffic impact, land use, and transport demands. So embedding accessibility in transport planning requires some new accessibility tools. 

One of the issues with adopting equity principles is that they are usually only seen from a transport disadvantage viewpoint. But everyone benefits when their accessibility increases. Using an accessibility approach enables transport planners to focus on human performance rather than infrastructure performance. 

Ann Arbor is the subject of a case study where Levine analyses the accessibility impact on three land use development projects. This is where the paper becomes technical. 

Levine’s proposed method goes beyond the mobility focus and concepts such as the cost of congestion. The tool takes a standard traffic impact analysis and combines it with an accessibility analysis of an individual land development project. 

The title of the discussion paper is, The Accessibility Shift: Conceptual Obstacles and How to Overcome (one of) Them. 

Accessible public transportation: A book

Front cover of the book showing a typical city street in US. There are cars, buses, a train, bicycles and pedestrians.Everyone is happy when a wheeled mobility user can quickly and easily board the bus or train. And the person wheeling on doesn’t get unwanted attention from other passengers. Based on research in the United States comes a book on accessible public transportation. It covers different technologies, policies and programs with inclusive solutions for everyone. The book is based on research from Center for Inclusive Design and Environmental Access at Buffalo.

The research was carried out with a range of stakeholders and is useful for policymakers, planners and advocates.

The title of the book is Accessible public transportation: designing service for riders with disability . The video below shows what went into the research, and list of chapters following gives an overview of the content. The focus is on people with disability, but of course, designing this group becomes good design for everyone.

1 The Importance of Public Transportation
2 The Culture of Accessible Transportation
3 The Scope of Inclusive Transportation 
4 Trip Planning and Rider Information 
5 The Built Environment 
6 Vehicle Design 
7 Demand Responsive Transportation 
8 Paratransit Scheduling and Routing 
9 Location-Based Information 
10 Social Computing and Service Design 
11 Learning from Riders 
12 Vision for the Future 

Planning walkable neighbourhoods in Queensland

Front cover of the guide showing a montage of pictures: a tree-lined pathway, a group of new homes, children on a cycles on a cycle path.. Planning walkable neighbourhoods.New residential developments in Queensland must be walkable and encourage physical activity. Specific legislation requires among other conditions, connectivity, footpaths and street trees. Blocks must be no longer than 250 metres and residents must be within 400 metres of a park or open space. To help with planning walkable neighbourhoods there’s a guide. 

This move is supported by the Street Design Manual for Walkable Neighbourhoods. And Walkable, should also mean Wheelable. The manual is designed to help engineers, designers and planners to design more walkable and liveable residential areas. It was prepared by the Institute of Public Works Engineering Australasia in conjunction with the Queensland Government,

The guide covers open space, lot design, street design, active travel, public transport, landscaping and much more. At 160 pages is it comprehensive. There is a brief mention of people using mobility devices, children, older people, and parents with strollers.

Practice Notes

Front cover of the practice notes. A set of practice notes was added to the guide in 2020 and they are supported by real life examples. They cover:

    1. Walkable and Legible Neighbourhoods
    2. Increasing Trees
    3. Contemporary Lot Topologies
    4. Designing for Small Lots
    5. Rear Lane Design
    6. Design for Cyclists
    7. Building a Street Cross Section
    8. Traffic Volume

The second part on design detail was not available on the website at the time of writing. 

 

Smart Cities Playbooks

This post has four different smart cities playbooks. They are by UNHabitat, the Smart Cities Council, 3Gict’s Smart Cities for All, and the fourth is by two urban planners.

UNHabitat – People-Centered Smart Cities Playbooks webpage introduces a series of playbooks as basic components of their smart cities program. The aim of the playbooks is to empower local government to take a co-design approach to digital transformations. This is so that cities can work on sustainability, inclusivity and human rights for everyone. The playbooks are titled:

  • Centering People in Smart Cities
  • Assessing the Digital Divide
  • Addressing the Digital Divide
  • Shaping Co-creation and Collaboration
  • Infrastructure and Security
  • Building Capacity
A city skyline at night against a backdrop of a computer circuitry board.

Connected Games Playbook

The Smart Cities Council is on the front foot preparing their thinking for the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games. They are focused on the digital aspects of the Games and have devised two smart cities playbooks.

Smart Cities Playbook No 1 sets the digital scene for the Games covering transport, facilities, housing and urban development.

Smart Cities Playbook No 2 provides guidance on the development of a South East Queensland Regional Data Strategy. Data is one the most valuable assets within the region but is undervalued and under utilised. The Strategy should support good governance and lead the implementation.

Five Pillars of Inclusive Smart Cities

A smart city uses communication technology to enhance liveability, workability, and sustainability. While the tech gets smarter it’s not getting more accessible. The most significant barriers to inclusion are lack of leadership, policy, and awareness, and limited solutions. James Thurston lists the five pillars in the Smart Cities for All Toolkit as:

  1. Strategic Intent: inclusion strategy and leadership
  2. Culture: citizen engagement and transparency
  3. Governance & Process: procurement and partnerships
  4. Technology: Global standards and solution development
  5. Data: Data divide and solutions

The Smart Cities for All Toolkit empowers city leaders and urban planners to make their programs truly “smart” by being inclusive and accessible by design.

Toni Townes-Whitley, Vice President, Microsoft.
cover of Smart Cities Toolkit.

You can see a 13 minute video of one of James’ presentations that covers similar ground. 

Busting myths about smart cities

Chelsea Collier and Dustin Haisler’s Smart Cities Playbook begins with myth-busting. The myths include: it’s all about technology; it’s only for big cities, it costs a lot; and only governments can do it.

The second part of their playbook focuses on best practices covering infrastructure, people and intelligence. The third part introduces seven steps to a smart-er community with practical worksheets for guidance.

Smart cities and intercultural inclusion

For an extension of smart city thinking, see a paper from Europe which addresses issues of migration and cultural inclusion. The title, is, Design-Enabled Innovation in Smart City
Context. Fostering Social Inclusion Through Intercultural Interaction.

Public toilets and cultural conflict

When you gotta go, you gotta go and it doesn’t matter who you are or how you identify. Historically, the use of public toilets has been studied from four different and separate perspectives. These are gender, public health, ergonomics, and the spaces people like between themselves and others. Public opinion plays a role and this makes the creation of inclusive public toilets a site of cultural conflict.

Standard toilet block in a rural area signed as Ladies and Gents.

Trans* rights are getting more attention these days and public toilets seem to be an area where public opinion plays a big part. But the trans population is not the only group that has trouble with toilet rooms.

Public toilets have been around for more than 2000 years. They are both public and intimate places at the same time. This gives rise to an emotional response to our need to eliminate and dispose of our waste. We care who we share this public yet intimate space with.

Steinfeld, Thibodeaux and Klaiman have taken up the issues with a view to solving issues by design. That is, to make these public amenities more inclusive. In doing so, it might provide some insights into making other public facilities more inclusive. The title of their research paper is, Public Restrooms: A Site of Cultural Conflict.

The research paper outlines a literature review and the qualitative research methods. The aim is to identify strategies for inclusive restroom design that is acceptable to the US population generally.

From the conclusions

The researchers note that in many parts of North America, any attempt to depart from the conventional binary women/men design will be politicised. Hence they can expect little, if any change. The conventional euro-centric gender segregated restroom is a reflection of a culture that supports a rigid idea of gender identity. Unfortunately, it neglects the realities of diverse needs.

Supporters of trans access to restrooms have focused on changing laws. However, laws do not address the whole problem. They can still face violence and abuse. The design of public toilets needs to be addressed too.

On orange door with a sign saying Unisex Toilet and baby change with icons to match.

A simple strategy for improving trans access is re-signing single user restrooms to be “all-gender”. It is an good initial first step because trans and cisgender people with additional needs can use these restrooms.

From the abstract

Public restrooms have become the major locus of conflict over trans rights. But this is only the latest manifestation of cultural conflicts related to restrooms. Historically, the restroom has been studied through four aligned, but separate, lenses: gender studies, public health, ergonomics, and proxemics.

These four lenses are both interdependent and intersectional. A review of literature paints a picture of how this conflict represents the gulf between embedded cultural values and the lived experience of a diverse population. We hypothesize that there is strong consensus on what people desire in toilet rooms, particularly regarding safety, hygiene, and privacy. However, these desires conflict with a cultural legacy based on hetero-normative values.

This hypothesis was tested through a review of research and preliminary findings from a survey that targets the intersections of gender identity, public health, ergonomics, and boundary regulation. This research leads to a holistic picture of the public restroom and situates the contemporary conflict as the result of polarized public opinion.

Demographics and ideology play an important role in forming opinions. While the public restroom is the main focus, this research improves our understanding about the larger issues. How might our built environment adapt in response to a more nuanced view of gender? How might urban spatial practices serve as catalysts for social change.

*Note that the term “trans” is used to encompass a wide range of gender identities including transgender, intersex, gender non-conforming and others.

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