PRIVILEGED TO HAVE 2 MILLION READERS

MORE THAN 2 MILLION UNIQUE READERS

HAVE VISITED MY BLOG OVER ITS LIFETIME 

 

TENS OF THOUSANDS READ IT EACH DAY

 

I am grateful that so many people read my daily posts about Universal Design, Inclusive Mobility, Perils for Pedestrians and Quality of Life.

 

My work creates a better built environment by influencing architects, engineers, planners, landscape architects and sustainability/resiliency professionals.

 

I have made powerful arguments for inclusion and equity with elected officials and appointed decision makers at the local, state and federal level.

I also toss in a few cute cat pics and some global travel photos.

 

That’s why it’s a blog, not the New York Times.

DEAR CITY/COUNTY:

IT IS NOT ENOUGH TO MARK AN INCREDIBLY DANGEROUS                   HOLE IN A MAJOR CROSSWALK WITH A CONE

When something is capable of tripping a pedestrian or tossing a wheelchair user to the ground, we fix it immediately. 

Double utility volts in the curb ramp and uneven pavement also are epic fails of pedestrian mobility.

A bad built environment is why people with disabilities are the most under- and unemployed of all marginalized groups.

Acknowledging a safety threatening hole in the crosswalk and buckled pavement, but neglecting to fix it…

This is like waiting to see a renowned cancer doctor. And she says yes, you have cancer, but I’m not going to treat it.

Pedestrians are not second class citizens.

CITIES TYPICALLY NEGLECT LOWER INCOME NEIGHBORHOODS

WHEN THE UPGRADES COME, CITY LEADERS ARE CLEARING THE WAY FOR NEW WELL-HEELED RESIDENTS – NOT THOSE THAT HAVE SUFFERED WITH SUBSTANDARD CIVIC SPACE

An outsized proportion of people with disabilities is unemployed or underemployed. 

When cities care about fixing/widening sidewalks + safe crosswalks & premium transit--the affordable/accessible housing is on the way out and the wealthy hipsters are on the way in.

CELEBRATING MORE THAN A THIRD OF A MILLION READERS

EARLY THIS YEAR, WE MARKED MORE THAN 333,333 UNIQUE VISITORS TO THIS BLOG

We focus a lot of our blog on Universal Design, Inclusive Mobility and all planning, architecture, urban design, mobility engineering and landscape architecture that impacts the built environment.

We point out barriers to people with disabilities and share best practices for removing those barriers.

We share images of travels around the world.

We suggest better public policy.

Long before DEI was a catch phrase, we underscored the need for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion + Accessibility.

We share news from our teaching at the University of Miami School of Architecture.

Most of our blog posts address social justice.

This week, our alma mater – Kent State University – will observe the 52^nd anniversary of the May 4^th 1970s shootings.

The room in Taylor hall where we learned to be a professional reporter, writer and communicator – is now home to the May 4 Visitor’s Center.

https://www.kent.edu/may4visitorscenter

 

HONORED TO BE PRESENTING INCLUSIVE MOBILITY BEST PRACTICES

AT THE AMERICAN PLANNING ASSOCIATION 2022 NATIONAL CONFERENCE

Teaming with Deborah Myerson to present "Mobility Matters: Mistakes You Don’t Want to Make."

Creating an inclusive and accessible environment requires more than adhering to basic ADA requirements, avoiding ableist terminology, or providing closed captioning for city meetings.

These actions are important, but local governments must be dedicated to widespread accessibility and mobility.

Otherwise, micromobility for some — like scooters — creates outright travel hazards for more vulnerable pathway users.

Examine these and other common mistakes in planning for accessibility and learn how local governments can adopt a more comprehensive approach to accessible transportation and mobility for people with disabilities.

Speakers highlight opportunities and examples of how to:

Involve disabled people in decisions about transportation design, construction, maintenance, and operations.

Seek meaningful input and share decision-making power.

Establish an equitable process based on transparency, inclusiveness, respect, and building trusted relationships with the community.

Prioritize safety and ensure access in sidewalk design, roads, public rights of way, and other transportation facilities to reduce risk for the most vulnerable users.

Adopt ongoing evaluation and assessment to improve equitable outcomes.

PROUD TO HAVE MORE THAN 300,000 READERS and to

 BLOG DAILY ABOUT URBAN DESIGN AND DISABILITY ADVOCACY

 

We stared this blog a decade ago – when we only had one email account.

It was before we Tweeted several times a day, made Facebook posts all the time and shared Instagram stories plus LinkedIn articles.

We have made more than 3,000 posts.

We remember when we celebrated 15,000 unique visitors to the site.

Now we have shared more than 1,500 fine art images taken around the globe – showing the best in travel, town planning, inclusion, equity and accessibility.

We have taken government leaders, big business and others to task for failing to make the world wheelchair-accessible and barrier-free to all.

We have serialized national magazine cover and centerspread stories, enhanced with exclusive added information and images we took with our own digital SLR.

The combined content would fill three to four full volume nonfiction books.

The insights have influenced hundreds of urban designers, transportation engineers, town planners, landscape architects, sustainability experts, architects and policymakers.

It has shared dynamic theories on universal design, inclusive mobility and environmental justice.

Stay tuned for more.

 

WHEN INCLUSIVE DESIGN...ISN'T (PART 11)

TOWN PLANNING MUST SERVE PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES 

Could planners’ 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.

 

 

WHEN INCLUSIVE DESIGN...ISN'T (PART 10)

TOWN PLANNING MUST SERVE PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES 

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 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?

WHEN INCLUSIVE DESIGN...ISN'T (PART 9)

TOWN PLANNING MUST SERVE PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES 

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.

WHEN INCLUSIVE DESIGN...ISN'T (PART 8)

TOWN PLANNING MUST SERVE PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES 

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.

WHEN INCLUSIVE DESIGN...ISN'T (PART 7)

TOWN PLANNING MUST SERVE PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

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

WHEN INCLUSIVE DESIGN...ISN'T (PART 6)

TOWN PLANNING MUST SERVE PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES 

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.

WHEN INCLUSIVE DESIGN...ISN'T (PART 5)

TOWN PLANNING MUST SERVE PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES 

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.

WHEN INCLUSIVE DESIGN...ISN'T (PART 4)

TOWN PLANNING MUST SERVE 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. 

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

WHEN INCLUSIVE DESIGN...ISN'T (PART 3)

TOWN PLANNING MUST SERVE PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES 

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?

WHEN INCLUSIVE DESIGN...ISN'T (PART 2)

TOWN PLANNING MUST SERVE PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES 

I really do appreciate how much they are seeing fewer cars on the road and re-imagining 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?

AMERICA'S GO-TO JOURNALIST FOR COVERING PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

PULTIZER-NOMINATED, AWARD-WINNING EXPERTISE IN UNIVERSAL DESIGN AND INCLUSIVE MOBILITY IN THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT

Two of my editors, one at America’s most-prestigious planning magazine, another at the nation’s leading smart growth publication, humbled me recently.

Both were reaching out days after I got back to the U.S. after an urban design project in Cairo almost stranded me in Egypt (first due to record flooding, then greatly-reduced flights due to the pandemic) to see if I could write comprehensive stories in little turnaround time.

Each basically said I was not just their go-to journalist, but I was arguably America’s go-to reporter on issues of Urban Design, Town Planning, Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Mobility Engineering and related disciplines that impact people with disabilities.

I was gratified that a 40-year career in storytelling (yes, I earned my first hefty paycheck as a reporter before I was even old enough to drive with a learner’s permit) was appreciated.

I am humbled that my writing voice has been able to push for a more-inclusive public and private realm.

There are dozens, hundreds of top-flight reporters, columnists and editors who have mobility, visual or mobility disabilities.

I simply understand wheelchair access and barrier-removal because I have been my soulmate’s caregiver for a third of a century.

I vow, for as long as I live, to continue to share best practices in human-scaled urban design.

MY URBAN AFFAIRS, TRAVEL, DISABILITY ADVOCACY AND MARKETING BLOG

SOON WILL HAVE A QUARTER OF A MILLION READERS

This blog started humbly, a decade ago, with a story giving guidance toward finding a wheelchair-accessible apartment in Barcelona.

It combined my favorite things: travel, urban design and advocacy for people with disabilities – all illustrated by my award-winning photography.

My blog grew to include advice about marketing professional services.

It also held government officials’ feet to the fire when they were advocating some boondoggle.

The blog shares best practices – and shines a light on bad actors – concerning universal design, inclusive mobility and sustainable, human-based civic design.

There have been more than 235,000 unique visitors.

The number grows daily.

Check out my 10,000 Urban Design tweets @stevewright64

CRIP CAMP: A DISABILITY REVOLUTION | Official Trailer | Netflix | Docume...

ADA @ 30 -- PART E

TRUTH

If a city -- large, medium or small -- cannot fix, maintain and patrol its sidewalks (the most basic, inexpensive, democratic means of mobility for all people of all incomes & abilities), it has no business:

Paying for pro sports stadiums.

Building shiny things for influential billionaires.

https://kcdisabilityadvocacy.wordpress.com/2015/10/09/the-importance-of-sidewalks/