{"id":1506,"date":"2024-01-25T11:07:26","date_gmt":"2024-01-25T11:07:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/ata\/?p=1506"},"modified":"2024-01-25T11:07:27","modified_gmt":"2024-01-25T11:07:27","slug":"accessibility-and-urban-design-ata-podcast-20241","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/ata\/accessibility-and-urban-design-ata-podcast-20241\/","title":{"rendered":"Accessibility and Urban Design: ATA podcast 2024:1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Listen to the podcast episode<\/a> or download the transcript<\/a><\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Show notes by Rachel Aldred<\/em>, ATA Director<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this latest episode, ATA Research Fellow Harrie Larrington-Spencer interviews Professor Aimi Hamraie, whose research focuses on disability, accessibility, and urban design. They discuss taking a critical lens on accessibility, active travel, and mobility justice, and the need to broaden our understanding of all three.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Aimi
Prof. Aimi Hamraie<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Aimi\u2019s work has explored ways in which concepts of accessibility and urban design have institutionalised and limited understandings of disability. For example, most (although still not enough) attention has been paid to mobility impairments, rather than for instance neurodivergence. Moreover, often there is an assumption that individuals have mobility needs which can be resolved through individual adaptations (where this is considered not to be too much work for the system, such as an employer). However, even where adaptations are available \u2013 and often they are not \u2013 this individualises systemic problems requiring wider solutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aimi and Harrie discuss topics including the concept of independence and ways that technologies such as wheelchairs and adapted bikes are portrayed as allowing people to achieve independent lives. This is a step forward from a paternalistic view of disabled people as necessarily dependent. However, it obscures the extent to which interdependence is a crucial aspect of everyone\u2019s lives, not only disabled people, and \u2018independence\u2019 within a globally connected, unequal, capitalist society a chimera.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another theme raised in the interview relates to anti-fat bias within urban design and planning, including in active travel advocacy and research. Aimi suggests that the growth of \u2018healthy cities\u2019 research in the 90s was shaped by wider narratives about the desirability of thinness and of weight loss. (An example of this can be seen in the \u2018Fast Lane\/Fat Lane\u2019 advertisement, which ran in 2006 in Manchester, UK \u2013 link https:\/\/www.manchesterfoe.org.uk\/loveyourbike\/fast-lane-fat-lane-ad-campaign-2006\/<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s lots of thought-provoking material in this episode for anyone interested in active travel, urban design, or disability. Additional resources are listed below if you want to learn more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publications by Aimi<\/p>\n\n\n\n