When Inclusive...Isn't

A “complete” street concept. Image source.

I love urban design. As a part of the extended disability community (my wife has used a wheelchair for mobility for four decades and is a brilliant Americans with Disabilities Act compliance professional), could it please love me back?

I even love all 100 drawings per day posted by urban designers, traffic engineers, town planners and architects that show how inclusive streets and sidewalks can be. I really appreciate that they are angling so hard to cash in on the post-pandemic new world order—or at least design of its streets and streetscapes.

OK, that was snarky. But I really do appreciate how much they are seeing fewer cars on the road and reimagining wide sidewalks, safe crosswalks, calmed traffic and streets being more for the people than the automobile.

But if they love including everyone so much, you’d think the vast majority of town planners could invest all of five minutes to drag and drop a few people with disabilities into documents marketing allegedly inclusive design? Could their tweets, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, blog and professional/academic article posts address wheelchair users? Could they dedicate a few lines about how multimodal mobility, public transit, safe crosswalks, calmed traffic and wide/curbless sidewalks—greatly increase access to jobs, education, recreation, aging-in-place, health care, civic space, the arts and shopping for people with disabilities?

Installing outdoor lifts doesn’t make a place genuinely inclusive. Outdoor lifts are quickly obsolete, often don’t work, and don’t hold up well in the elements. Both this lift and the one below are broken 90% of the time. Image credit: Steve Wright

COVID has created this situation as a matter of staying alive. The reaction to coronavirus has reduced air pollution and emphasized walking, biking and getting around via assistive mobility devices such as wheelchairs and scooters.

Those who earn their bread have reacted to this and are positioning themselves to be the shepherds of the new walkable utopia. Good for them. You could fill (social distancing observed, of course) a giant stadium with planners patting themselves on the back for creating “inclusive places for all.” I read their lengthy, gushing posts about their human-scaled master plans. I gaze at dozens of vivid images of people-centric placemaking.

Then my enthusiasm melts to anger.

Image credit: Steve Wright

It is painfully evident that virtually all of these gifted planners and designers have decided wheelchair users—and those who move about using crutches, walkers and other assistive mobility devices—do not merit one percent of their images or even one line in their 1,000-word design essay. Apparently, all the people with disabilities have died or been sent off to Mars in their depictions of a brave, new, pedestrian-as-king world. Or maybe they are still being forced to stay home, as if the ADA never existed.

It’s a shame. Most pedestrian-focused design, supported with premium public transit and multimodal mobility—could create a near utopia for people with disabilities. But though they are a prime consumer, people with mobility disabilities clearly do not merit even one moment in the vision of these ableist, arrogant designers.

This is the same mindset that for decades, meant greeting cards, TV ads and catalogues were virtually devoid of anyone who remotely looked Black, Hispanic, Asian, LGBTQ, etc. The big companies were ready and willing to make a buck off minorities. But show them as end users of carefully managed brands? Heaven forbid! The world isn’t ready for it.

In these enlightened times, we (thankfully, correctly, appropriately) see a diverse tapestry of people in media. Talk five minutes to a planner and he or she will tell you they are the most diverse and enlightened of the many practitioners that shape the built environment. As such, I wouldn’t expect to see a sample street section or civic space—with dozens of people enjoying the new human-focused design—and all of them are 30-year-old white males.

And I never do. Planners know (whether it is based on truly embracing all, or simply understanding they better market to all) to embrace ethnic diversity in those little mock-up, computer clip art human beings moving about their imagined new towns.

Curious, I went online. I found tons of people with disability clip art. (Getty Images and Verizon Media even teamed up to create The Disability Collection.) Diverse image of people with disabilities could readily be dropped onto the wide sidewalk, safe street crossing, bus stop, walking trail and every other pedestrian-friendly drawing in master plans.

I go back to reviewing hundreds of fresh, post-pandemic streetscapes (often called complete streets or inclusive design.) I note, by no coincidence or accident, people of every diversity—except disability—in these slick images.

There is a wise and brutally frank saying in the disability community: Nothing about us without us. It clearly means that if there are no people with disabilities at the table, no planning with them in mind, nothing good will come out of the meaning well-meaning, but insultingly-paternal plans and processes that exclude them.

Could the vast majority of town planners invest all of five minutes to drag and drop a few people with disabilities into documents marketing allegedly inclusive design? Could their tweets, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, blog and professional/academic article posts address wheelchair users? Could they dedicate a few lines about how multimodal mobility, public transit, safe crosswalks, calmed traffic and wide/curbless sidewalks greatly increase access to jobs, education, recreation, aging-in-place, health care, civic space, the arts and shopping for people with disabilities?

Until they do so, their idealistic designs (pretending) to embrace and accommodate all are anything but inclusive.

A visit to Luxor, Egypt shreds the argument that old plazas and buildings are impossible to make accessible. Antiquity introduced universal design. Hatshepsut Temple (1450 BCE) has ramped access. Image credit: Steve Wright

Karnak Temple (1400 BCE) features miles of wheelchair access and signage for those who need it. Image credit: Steve Wright

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Steve Wright (@stevewright64) is a writer, disability rights activist and marketer of design services. He has 35 years of expertise in planning for the built environment. His byline has appeared in hundreds of newspapers, magazines and online publications. The Miami-based Wright is known to get sarcastic when he writes about design that is not inclusive despite claims to the contrary. He blogs daily at: http://urbantravelandaccessibility.blogspot.com/