Urban Accessibility as a Socio-Political Problem (original) (raw)
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International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Urban areas offer many opportunities for people with disabilities, but limited accessibility may prevent their full engagement in society. It has been recommended that the experience-based perspective of people with disabilities should be an integral part of the discussion on urban accessibility, complementing other stakeholder expertise to facilitate the design of more inclusive environments. The goals of this mixed-method study were to develop knowledge mobilization (KM) strategies to share experience-based findings on accessibility and evaluate their impact for various urban stakeholders. Using a participatory approach, various KM strategies were developed including videos, a photo exhibit and an interactive game. These strategies were evaluated based on various impact indicators such as reach, usefulness, partnerships and practice changes, using quantitative and qualitative methods. The findings suggested that the KM strategies were effective in raising the awareness of various ...
Spatial accessibility as a driver to build an inclusive and proactive city
Urbani izziv, 2021
Providing the largest number of persons the possibility to actively move and contribute to their own well-being also depends on the spatial accessibility to urban environment. From this perspective, the present article addresses two main questions: to what extent can the physical arrangement of public spaces play a key role in enabling individuals' capabilities to lead a healthy life, and how can accessibility affect urban regeneration. Accessibility is here understood as a fundamental right of citizenship and as a prompt to set the reflection on sensorial/cognitive/motor disabilities within a broader frame, covering many fields of urban agendas: social justice and health, sustainable mobility and Universal Design, and nature-based solutions. COVID-19 distancing measures have further emphasized the importance of these issues, stressing the need to make urban spaces walkable and usable for the most vulnerable citizens. The research Proactive City, developed at the University of Trieste (IT), offers input into this debate. The outcomes of design workshops in the Italian region Friuli Venezia Giulia, as well as of collaboration activities with the Regional Administration, provide technical and methodological recommendations to rethink "accessibility for all", not as synonymous with special solutions addressed to persons with disabilities but as an overall approach to envisaging any urban transformation and policy.
Accessibility planning in American metropolitan areas: Are we there yet?
Urban Studies, 2017
Transportation-planning researchers have long argued that the end goal of a transportation system is increasing accessibility, or opportunities for individuals to meet their daily needs, but that US practice tends to focus on increasing mobility, or opportunities to travel farther and faster. This study finds evidence that the gap between theory and practice may be closing when it comes to accessibility, but that significant barriers still exist to the wider adoption of the accessibility paradigm among metropolitan planning organisations, the main entities responsible for regional transportation planning in the USA. We measure this gap by creating an accessibility index based on content analysis of a nationally representative sample of 42 US regional transportation plans (RTPs). We then use regression-tree analysis to determine the characteristics of metropolitan areas that are most likely to employ accessibility concepts. Finally, we identify barriers to a wider adoption of the acc...
The possibility and potential of public policy on accessibility
Transportation Research, 15A (5) (1981), 377–381
The development of measures of accessibility has proceeded largely independently of concern for the ways in which public policy makers respond to analytic research. Academic interest in accessibility is not necessarily paralleled by a public interest and the former cannot be expected to have a ready-made market or to promote public policy of its own accord. Public policy on accessibility will only be forthcoming if accessibility is a well politicized issue. If improved accessibility can be achieved as part of other programs, then there is little likelihood of public policy being addressed to accessibility exclusively. If conditions are such that public policy on accessibility is a possibility, sound policy-relevant research is still not a guarantee of program success. Successful implementation of public policy relies in part on identifying those who have actual and not merely nominal control over outcomes. Political viability is also vital to the working of accessibility. Public policy imposed from above is unlikely to succeed in the context of a pluralist society honeycombed with special interest groups committed to participatory problem solving. Reflecting on the possibility of formulating and implementing an effective policy on accessibility suggests the importance of giving as much attention to the development of a conceptually robust and incisive notion of accessibility as to the improvement of accessibility measures.
Israel's Equal Rights for People with Disabilities Act, and specifically its Accessibility Chapter, promotes a shift in the discourse on disability, from charity to human rights. Using the Municipality of Tel Aviv-Jaffa as a case study, this research examines how disability legislation is implemented in practice. Combining qualitative methodology and Critical Disability policy theory, this paper compares the municipality's actions before and after approval of the Accessibility Chapter. It examines how principles stemming from the social model of disability, formally integrated into the law itself, have been translated into municipal planning practices. The findings show that the municipality has undergone significant processes of professionalization and institutionalization. This facilitated comprehensive implementation of the Accessibility Chapter and its underpinning principle of inclusion. But these processes have also led to a shift of authority, from welfare professionals to accessibility advisors and planners; this has prevented citizens with disabilities from participating in decision-making processes on policies that affect their lives. This paper presents a critical organizational analysis of the field of accessibility for people with disabilities in an urban context. I argue that the professionalization of the field of accessibility affects the participation of people with disabilities, due to the institutionalization of professional practices, and the inherently technical and operational nature of the planning professions. Disability Studies scholars have proposed strategies to ensure the participation of people with disabilities alongside the drive to professionalization, notably in the field of medicine. I suggest that these strategies should similarly be adopted in the field of urban planning.
Services, Systems and Policies Shaping the Built Environment for People with Mobility Impairments
Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research, 2020
Background: For people with mobility impairments, access to the built environment is essential to their community mobility. Services, systems and policies shape accessibility and affect the opportunities people have to participate in society. Aim: To gain an understanding of the accessibility policy of the built environment in Iceland through an exploration of policy documents. Method: Public policy documents regarding accessibility from official websites of local and national authorities in Iceland were collected and reviewed. Findings: This review summarizes policies and identifies critical concerns that need to be addressed to improve access to the built environment in Iceland: (1) inconclusive or incomplete information, (2) limited clarity in legislation and guidelines, (3) limited users' involvement in policymaking, (4) insufficient monitoring of services and (5) limited fit with usability values. All those aspects are critical to ensure and protect disabled people's rights to move around and participate in society.
2017
To create enabling environments for as many individuals as possible, including individuals with physical disabilities (IPD) who are more prone to encounter environmental barriers limiting their social participation, we need to examine current municipal practices related to accessibility. The objectives of this study were to describe existing practices for the design of accessible pedestrian infrastructures (API) for IPD living in Quebec (Canada), as well as to identify the perceived informational needs of the municipalities to design such infrastructures. A WEB survey was developed and validated by experts (i.e., municipal/provincial entities, IPD advocacy organisations, public transportation society, and researchers) and was sent to 507 municipalities. Descriptive statistics and recursive partitioning were performed, which allowed for the analyses of predictive variables using arborescence (e.g. the characteristics of the municipality that predict the implementation of various acce...
Urban accessibility issues Technoscientific democratizations at the documentation interface
After many struggles from disability rights and independent-living advocates, urban accessibility has gradually become a concern for many urban planners across post-industrial countries. In this paper, based on ethnographic fieldwork studies in Barcelona working with urban accessibility professionals and activists, we argue for the importance of the 'documentation interfaces' created in their struggles: that is, the relational processes to collaboratively build multi-media accounts in a diversity of formats seeking to enforce different translations of bodily needs into specific urban accessibility arrangements. In discussion with the asymmetries that the ongoing expertisation of accessibility might be opening up, we would like to foreground these apparently irrelevant practices as an interesting site to reflect on how urban accessibility struggles might allow us to rethink the project of technical democracy and its applications to urban issues. Two cases are analysed: (1) the creation of Streets for all, a platform to contest and to sensitize technicians and citizens alike of the problems of 'shared streets' for the blind and partially sighted led by the Catalan Association for the Blind; and (2) the organization of the Tinkerthon, a DIY and open-source hardware workshop boosted by En torno a la silla to facilitate the creation of a network of tinkerers seeking to self-manage accessibility infrastructures. These cases not only bring to the fore different takes to the democratisation of the relations between technical professionals and disability rights advocates, but also offer different approaches to the politics of universals in the design of urban accessibility arrangements.