Just as ageing in place is an implementation of universal design at the residential scale, inclusive urbanism is an implementation of universal design at the urban scale. Inclusive urbanism means designing our built environment and its systems to serve as many people as possible, regardless of age or ability. It also is one in which all people, regardless of social group, may join and participate in opportunities in our built environment (Belausteguigoitia, 2019). Doing this demands that designers must know their clients, stakeholders, and community members.
Designing with a focus on users, however intuitive, flips traditional top-down urban design rooted in High Modernism; allowing inclusive urbanism to represent a bottom-up collaborative design process that reinterprets conventional notions of urbanism and planning. This creates a wide range of design possibilities and methodologies for engaging with urban spaces and the communities that use and depend on them.
This article will illustrate three approaches to inclusive urbanism, which can be rooted in asking a fundamental question: who is the designer?
The Street; an Inclusive Communal Space
Rather than situating the SESC Pompeia Factory of Sao Paulo within a traditional dialogue of modern urbanism, Lina Bo Bardi dares to reinterpret the “street”. Rather than defaulting to a public street solely as a transportation corridor, Bo Bardi interprets it as an interior and exterior avenue that produces ground and elevated leisure and performing stages. This activates the street as a communal space and enables the occurrences of activities and events aimed at strengthening community ties (Meninato, 2023).
Value to Who?
It is important to understand that the most important stakeholders are within the organizations, communities, and neighbors which any act of urban design will impact. Historically, when acts of urbanism are done without regard for large swatches of communities, the acts are to facilitate movement, such as Robert Mose’s urban planning of highways in the 30s and 40s, which disregarded local stakeholders and neighbors, predominantly those of lower social class and less voice in society (Roman Mars, 2024). While imposing a top-down approach, Bo Bardi’s design and evaluation of the site produces an act of inclusive urbanism which reinterprets the tool of oppressive urban design for something humane which allows the street to be a connector and social medium to enable community engagement.
Participatory Planning the Park
As noted, urban planning is typically employed with a top-down approach, where “educated” designers, researchers, or bureaucrats administratively develop urbanism to fulfill a perceived need in the community. Instead, to foster inclusive urbanism, processes such as participatory planning should be engaged to identify stakeholders, understand their needs, and allow them to have a voice in developments in their area. One such example can be seen in the work of Ecosistema Urbano with their project Thinking Fadura in Getxo, Spain.
The project looked to transform the area into an open park that responds to public opinion while addressing security, accessibility, and compatible uses to sustain its recreation facilities and ecologically sensitive areas. By using a variety of engagement strategies: social mapping, a web database of resources, in-person meetings, and surveys, Ecosistema Urbano developed design strategies in response to the opinions and needs of local community members. This developed a project that is supportive of the local community, responsive to the needs of varying ages of citizens, and was applauded for its ability to receive equal gender input (Ecosistema Urbano, 2017).
Resilient Communities Develop Inclusive Urbanism
Often, when municipal planners fail to develop plans that respond to the needs of communities, communities with strong ties and embedded community organizations can fill the gaps and reappropriate space which produces inclusive urbanism. This is spoken extensively in Rebecca Solnit’s Paradise Built in Hell. where when tragedy strikes, the idea, and often the media-propelled idea, is that there is anarchy; however, Solnit identifies in San Francisco following the 1906 Earthquake and in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, communities unite to brave their conditions and form resiliency (Solnit, 2009).
Inclusive through Media-Public Partnerships: The Harlem Heat Project
In the United States in particular, it has been found that heat waves killed more people than all other weather-related disasters combined. The Harlem Heat Project is an act of inclusive urbanism that demonstrates this strive for resiliency and community improvement at the local level in response to the dangers of heat waves. Additionally, instead of media outlets acting as an antagonistic force, local media network WNYC Studios acted as a partner which brought the problem forward and helped educate the local community on the dangers of non-air conditioned residences and indoor temperatures during heat waves (WNYC, 2019).
Rather than focusing on redesigning space, the Harlem Heat Project identifies inclusive urbanism and environmental justice as an act that demands the collection of data on the citizen level—a modern implementation of citizen science—to spur scientific records and promote the institution of legislation to support communities which face dangers from heat waves (Vant-Hull et al., 2018).
Community Data Collection to Problem Solving
Through the use of sensors in both public and private spaces, residents of Harlem developed a smart city dataset that researchers at the City University of New York analyzed and spatialized to highlight zones of urban heat islands within New York City (WNYC, 2019).
From this, the organizations came together and held workshops to develop three approaches to mitigate the dangers of heat waves: ensuring lobbies in public housing have functioning air conditioning, planting community roof gardens to dissipate heat and absorb stormwater, and developing personalized heat alerts when temperature levels spike—either to move to conditioned space or to check in on neighbors and friends to ensure community members are okay (Vant-Hull et al., 2018).
Inclusive Urbanism is of the People
These projects aim to illustrate that no matter the mode of action—design, process development, or adaptation—or design method—top-down, participatory planning, or community-led—inclusive urbanism demands engagement with local stakeholders, so that our urban environments aren’t just habitable, but reflective of our collective needs.
References:
Adam Glenn / AdaptNY Harlem Heat project (2022) Community Meeting Photo. Available at: https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/cities-are-tapping-residents-to-study-climate-change-impacts.
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Belausteguigoitia J (2019) INCLUSIVE URBANISM, SUSTAINABLE DESIGN AND COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT: A HOLISTIC APPROACH. In: SUSTAINABLE CITY 2019, Valencia, Spain, 10 December 2019, pp. 131–141. Available at: http://library.witpress.com/viewpaper.asp?pcode=SC19-012-1 (accessed 27 January 2024).
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Sarah Holder (2016) One idea to come out of the Harlem Heat Project workshop was to plant community gardens on the roofs of buildings, and ‘vertical farms’ on the exterior walls. Available at: https://www.wnyc.org/story/making-new-york-cool-again/.
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