Author: Jane Bringolf

Disability Justice and Urban Planning is a collection of articles focusing on people with disability and the built environment. Lisa Stafford and Leonor Vanik remind us it is 60 years since the first campaigns for justice began. In their introduction to the articles they argue that despite legislation we still live in an ableist world. People with disability continue to be excluded and subjugated.

In urban planning and design, these prejudices are played out in the built and digital form. … disabled people are constantly reminded that “you don’t belong – the world is not built for you”. Dignity and control are still not realised.

Basic things like using public transport to attend an appointment are taken for granted by many. However, this same activity for disabled people can require exhaustive planning to account for things that might go wrong. Many trips are not make because it’s just too hard.

Then there is the complexity of other social dimensions. Indigenous disabled people, disabled people of colour, queer disabled people and disabled women and girls. However, there is a growing resistance to oppression and exclusion.

The collection of articles brings into view a large and diverse group of people who have been unseen for so long. The aim is to open up conversations about body and mind diversity. The authors are people with disability and so the content is written with heart – it’s not just another academic exercise.

It’s time for planners and designers to not just listen but to act. It could be their future self they are planning and designing for.

The title of this collection of short articles is, Disability Justice and Urban Planning and is open access. Published in Planning Theory & Practice.

The authors use the language of “disabled people” in line with critical models of disability.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.