The architecture discipline is standing on a borderline that separates their design knowledge and user requirements. The trend is away from the all-knowing architect as a designer to sharing that knowledge with the users of the design. So, additional skills are required to those of design, that is, participatory engagement with users. A special issue journal takes up the topic of participatory architecture.
Participation can take place in almost any location. Unexpected places sometimes encourage the unpredictable – a good place for new ideas.
The special issue has cases from urban planning, hospital management, cultural heritage, restrooms, age care and social housing. The articles are focused on the way participation is practiced and researched in architecture. The editors extracted four lessons from these papers.
First, participation can take place in unusual and unexpected places, but it welcomes the unpredictable. Second, participatory research is often used where disadvantaged or vulnerable populations are involved. This can lead to useful experimentation for improving environments.
Third, the practice and research enables new knowledge to emerge in the iterative processes transferrable to future projects. Multidisciplinary teams generate verbal and non-verbal knowledge in the process.
Fourth, participation builds communities and networks, and reveals stories and experiences beyond the classroom and text books. There is satisfaction to gain through sharing and co-designing.
So the border between the expert and the non-expert becomes blurred in the participatory process of co-design and co-creation.
Talking about universal design is all very well, but it takes collective action to make it happen. Collective action for accessible and inclusive cities requires everyone to get on board and work together. And “everyone” means governments at all levels, urban planners and designers, construction companies, contractors and tradespeople. Everyone also means citizens and this is where co-design methods come in.
Two case studies form the basis of a research paper on two regional centres in Australia. One is in Geelong in Victoria and the other in Bunbury, Western Australia. The authors describe the collaborative and action oriented process in both studies.
A note of caution. Many local governments have little power over developments that not funded by them limiting what they can achieve. Private and commercial developers can legally challenge any requirements beyond the building codes.
Recommendations for both centres emerged from the research process. The key recommendation is to use a co-design and co-research process. The authors take a universal design to the whole process and recommendations. They also call for enhanced standards including mandating co-design.
This article compares research identifying the systemic barriers to disability access and inclusion in two regional Australian cities. We discuss some of the leadership and design challenges that government and industry need to address to embed universal design principles within urban planning, development.
In Geelong, Victoria, the disability community sought a more holistic and consultative approach to addressing access and inclusion. Systems‐thinking was used to generate recommendations for action around improving universal design regulations and community attitudes to disability. This included access to information, accessible housing, partnerships, and employment of people with disability.
In Bunbury, Western Australia, a similar project analysed systemic factors affecting universal design at a local government level. Recommendations for implementing universal design included staff training, policies and procedures, best practice benchmarks, technical support and engagement in co‐design.
Universal design and local government
Children enjoying the spinner in the playground
Here is an earlier paper from Adam Johnson who used Bunbury in Western Australia as a case study for his presentation at the UD2021 Australian Universal Design Conference. Bunbury set itself an aim, and a challenge, to be the “Most Accessible Regional City in Australia”. Adam explained how he used participatory action research (PAR) methods to meet Bunbury’s challenge. Universal design in local government means involving the people who are the subject of the research. In this case, people with disability and older people.
PAR has three principles:
The people most affected by the research problem should participate in ways that allow them to share control over the research process
The research should lead to some tangible action within the immediate context
The process should demonstrate rigour and integrity.
Adam recruited 11 co-researchers to work with him: 6 people with disability, 3 family carers, and 2 support workers.
Local government is where the ‘rubber hits the road’. Local government is best placed to work with residents and understand the context of where they live, and it means they can be innovative with solutions tailored to local needs.
The research project had a positive impact:
– Greater alignment between policies and practices at the City of Bunbury with universal design. – Co design panel created informing many current infrastructure projects. – Universal design standards adopted. – Staff and contractors trained in Universal Design. – $100,000 per annum allocated for auditing and retrofitting
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:
Critical choices and aspects – informal decisions also impact final result.
Conflicting visions, goals and interests between departments and public and private actors.
Critical recourses – supports and tools stakeholders need
The paper concludes with 7 recommendations based on their findings.
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.
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
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:
Strategic Intent: inclusion strategy and leadership
Culture: citizen engagement and transparency
Governance & Process: procurement and partnerships
Technology: Global standards and solution development
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.
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’sSmart 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.
The World Health Organization’s guide to age-friendly cities and active ageing set the trend for policy in 2002. The publication, Global Age-Friendly Cities: A Guide, supports the age-friendly framework. This inspired the development of the Global Network of Age-Friendly Cities and Communities. So how successful has this age-friendly movement been?
The longevity revolution is happening now. So it is a good time to review the success or otherwise of the age-friendly movement and the WHO framework for age-friendly cities.
The WHO Guide was initially designed to be a bottom-up participatory process. The flexibility of the process enabled individual cities and communities to work on local issues. However, it hasn’t quite worked that way. As with all participative processes, it comes down to whose voices are being heard at the discussion table. And it depends on whether the city or community is urban or rural and on the resources available.
Edgar Liu has checked out Australian policies across the three tiers of government. He wanted to find out if the WHO guide and framework inspired policy making. And if it did, to what extent. In a nutshell, these policies did not fully reflect socioeconomic and cultural diversity. Also, the policy focus remains on care and support services, which conflicts with the recommendations for connecting with multiple policy areas.
This paper reflects on whether and how the World Health Organization (WHO) inspires age-friendly policymaking across different levels of government. This is done via a case study in which we analyse the policies of Australia’s three-tiered federated government system against the WHO’s eight core age-friendly cities domains.
Findings suggest that membership of the Global Network of Age-Friendly Cities and Communities did not appear to overtly inspire the development of age-friendly policies across Australian governments.
Content analysis shows there is an overwhelming policy focus on care and support services, with little attention to cultural diversity. This reflects an outdated portrayal of debilitation in later life and a lack of recognition of how diverse circumstances impact the ageing process and corresponding support needs.
Our findings also reveal the challenges of a three-tiered federated system, where varying financial and authoritative capacities have influenced how different governments acknowledge and respond to population ageing.
Notably, local governments—the main level of implementation targeted by the WHO—are invariably constrained in developing their own age-friendly policies and may opt to adopt those of higher levels of government instead. These challenges will likely impact other resource-limited governments in responding to the needs of their emerging ageing populations.
CITY ACCESS MAP is a web application that shows how cities across the world are doing in terms of accessibility. It’s open source and covers any urban area with more than 100,000 residents. It computes walking accessibility down to the block level. It’s a tool for almost anyone who has an interest in cities that have access to services within a 15 minute walk.
A close up view of a city on the CITY ACCESS MAP
The CITYACCESSMAP is interactive and shows the differences in cities across the globe. For example, it shows that Bogota, Colombia is one of the most accessible cities. Orlando USA on the other hand is one of the least accessible. France is generally accessible with many cities reaching high levels of accessibility.
Australia is represented by Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide. Searching by city brings a close up view of the suburbs. In Sydney, it shows good accessibility in and around the CBD. However, as expected as you move to outer suburbs accessibility reduces considerably.
It should be noted that the term “accessibility” mainly refers to access to services rather than an accessible built environment. The tool is worth investigating as a planner and administrator in any field. If nothing else, it is interesting to see how countries compare.
For IT people wanting to know the detail of the map design there is more information in a separate section. You can download processed data for any city in the application.
The scientific research is also available and you can contribute to the project by contacting Leonardo Nicoletti.
Streets are more than a footpath and a stretch of bitumen or cobbles. They are integral to our way of life and have different uses at different times for different people. That’s what makes them complex places. Tensions between type of use and different users are sometimes difficult to solve. So how do you allocate street-space equitably and efficiently?
Community consultations are a great help and result in localised solutions. Perhaps this is a good thing. But is there a better way of doing this? Paulo Anciaes thinks there is and sets it out in a conference paper.
However, appraisal showed that some redesign options go against technical/design standards or political priorities.
Anciaes proposes a new process for streetspace reallocation using various tools. The tools include option generation, performance indicators and comparison of options. His case study using these tools showed that allocating more space to some street users brought benefit to others. But redesign options are not always compatible with technical standards or political priorities.
Lisbon case study
The process of developing the tools and their application were applied in five European cities. A busy street in Lisbon city centre was the subject of this particular paper. There were high demands for walking, cycling, car and bus movement, plus parking, loading and place activities. And street furniture limited the movement of pedestrians.
The political priorities were for walking and not restricting bus movement. Added to these was the need for social interaction and more greenery. This is all in a street only 22m wide.
The allocation of space to different uses in busy city streets is a complex and contentious process. Decisions to reallocate streetspace are usually based on public consultation and modelling of a few street redesign options, but results are not compared systematically. In addition, the set of options considered is usually incomplete.
This paper proposes a new process for streetspace reallocation, including option generation (with online and physical tools), estimation of performance indicators (with microsimulation), and comparison of options (with a new appraisal tool). The process was applied to the redesign of a busy street in Lisbon. Several options were generated, all involving reducing the street-space allocated to general motorised traffic.
Microsimulation showed that allocating more space to some street uses also bring benefits to other uses. The option to allocate more space to both bus users and pedestrians does not deteriorate movement by other modes. However, appraisal showed that some redesign options go against technical/design standards or political priorities.
Unintended consequences from policy actions are not new. Sometimes things come undone in those little details that seemed unimportant at the time. Sometimes it’s because policy actions come from different parts of an overall system. Transport is a case in point. Transport is about the whole journey – from the front gate to the destination and home again. It’s more than cars, buses and trains – it’s footpaths, information systems and supporting infrastructure. And transport is a key element of age-friendly cities.
Transportation is a social determinant of health – particularly for older people. According to the World Health Organization their “lives are guided by the available transportation system”.
One potential policy outcome is that distinct actions, which address different facets of the same overall approach, undermine one another.
Australian researchers set about assessing policy actions for supporting older people’s transportation in Greater Sydney. The analysis revealed unwanted consequences because some actions were undermining each other. They also found systemic constraints and the failure to account for small, but important, details.
Older people’s mobility applies to land use, open and public space, supplementary transport, and community transport. This means that policy makers need to examine interactions between different parts of the system so they can foresee potential unwanted consequences. Then they can do something about it.
1. Coordinate plans for residential and public transport development.
2. Establish key performance indicators for creating and funding new footpaths.
3. Improve cross-sector information flow.
4. Increase the predictability of funding for health and social care transport services.
From the abstract
Age-Friendly Cities (AFC) is a framework for promoting healthy ageing through local actions. We use systems thinking to assess potential outcomes of actions to support older people’s mobility, undertaken within an AFC commitment in Greater Sydney.
Four approaches to support older people’s mobility were identified and situated to the Multiple Governance Framework: land use, open and public space, supplementary transport, and community transport.
Analysis revealed potential for unwanted consequences associated with each, which can be generalised into three generic potential outcomes for other jurisdictions to consider. One recommendation is for policy actors to examine feedback interactions between actions so that they can foresee a wider range of outcomes and take defensive action against those unwanted.
This research identifies what to look for, in terms of potential outcomes, and where to look, in terms of the level of decision-making. This research offers a new way to assess the functioning of AFC governance networks by their collective outcomes and challenges the standards for the evaluation of AFC.
Ageing and Mobility: Getting out and about
Jane Bringolf participated in a webinar or the Australian Institute of Traffic Planning and Management, which includes anyone involved in transport. She covered 5 basic features older people need to encourage them to continue getting out and about. The content of the presentation, Ageing and Mobility, is on the YouTube video below.
After running 23 workshops with older people and local government across NSW, five key elements emerged. They are footpaths, seating, lighting, wayfinding and toilets. In rural areas, parking was also an issue. These were covered in a previous post along with a straightforward checklist on do’s and don’ts.
The car becomes a mobility device as people get older, which puts them at odds with the policy push to get out of the car. Older people feel safer either as a driver or a passenger. The fear of tripping and falling reduces their confidence for walking on uneven footpaths.
Parking adjacent to shops and services in rural towns was also an issue. This was sometimes due to the main street also being the main highway where street parking is restricted.
Ageing and mobility is more than cycles, buses and trains. Many older people just want to access their local neighbourhood to shop and socialise.
