VISITORS ARE APPALLED AT THE MISSING, BROKEN AND BLOCKED SIDEWALKS THROUGHOUT GREATER MIAMI
OUR LEADERS
SHOULD BE ASHAMED
Miami’s endless assault on pedestrian mobility—especially brutal for people with disabilities—is vomitrocious.
Developer builds a wider,
welcoming sidewalk—then fire hydrant/posts subtract 40% of its space.
Clearly the hydrant could have gone in space outside sidewalk.
THE ESSENTIAL TOOL FOR INTERGENERATIONAL COMMUNITIES
In
Illinois, the Heartland REALTOR® Organization used a $15,000 housing
opportunity grant from the NAR and partnered with the city of Woodstock, Ill.,
the Woodstock Community Unit School District 200 and Illinois REALTORS® to
build a prototype model home.
It will
incorporate Universal Design elements that will be used as a national model to
educate communities about building with “Universal Design from the ground up.”
Upon
completion, tours of the home’s features will be promoted to the public.
The
prototype is being used to ignite interest in new inventory for homes that are
designed to allow aging in place.
The project
has drawn interest from AARP and Metropolitan Mayors Caucus.
THE ESSENTIAL TOOL FOR INTERGENERATIONAL COMMUNITIES
Calming
traffic can be achieved with restriping and simple redesign. Visitability
simply requires a change in code.
Paying for
retrofitting housing for accessibility can be folded into standard economic
development incentives that virtually all cities offer.
Transit
training can be refocused to ensure drivers are serving disabled passengers
safely.
Adding
elevators to century-old transit systems is expensive, but there are billions
in federal dollars available for this.
THE ESSENTIAL TOOL FOR INTERGENERATIONAL COMMUNITIES
And if a
bus driver is not well trained in deploying lifts or in safely using tie downs
for those in assistive mobility devices, the benefits of rapid transit are
destroyed for the 80 million people with a disability in the United States.
Without
transit, multiple generations cannot connect to exchange ideas, gather healthy
food, keep fit or break the boundaries of isolation.
Simply
taking away benches along streets, in an ill-intended attempt to reduce use by
homeless people, can prevent an elderly person from staying healthy by walking
a half dozen blocks to the library, grocery store or neighborhood shop.
People
cannot age in place if their housing, sidewalks, transit, parks and civic
buildings exclude them.
Children
cannot safely move about the community independently if sidewalks are blocked
by parked cars, bike lanes are blocked by delivery trucks and streets are too
dangerous to cross because of speeding traffic.
THE ESSENTIAL TOOL FOR INTERGENERATIONAL COMMUNITIES
Author Anna
Zivarts’ research has proven that up to one-third of people do not drive.
When
Driving Is Not an Option -- Steering Away from Car Dependency is the Island
Press book by Zivarts.
Transit can
provide mobility for people too young to drive, too old to drive, unable to
drive or unable to afford a car.
Unfortunately,
the vast majority of older subway stations in New York and elevated trains in
Chicago do not have elevators for access.
This makes
essential transit off limits not only to wheelchair users, but those who cannot
walk tons of steps because of respiratory or pulmonary issues, bad joints or
even young children who can’t negotiate stairs.
THE ESSENTIAL TOOL FOR INTERGENERATIONAL COMMUNITIES
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Eleanor
Smith created Visitability, a concept for accessible housing and for creating a
community where people with disabilities can visit their neighbors, a huge
factor in creating a cohesive multigenerational neighborhood.
It simply
requires a level entrance, accessible bathroom on the first floor and space to
maneuver around a kitchen.
It still allows all kinds of unique details and multistory, single-family
homes.
Cities that
have enacted Visitability have NOT seen a decrease in housing development
despite pushback from builders.
Creating
accessibility in multifamily buildings can begin with an entrance not
obstructed by bikes or scooters, a large elevator and a roll-in/walk-in shower
instead of a tub.
Most hip
hotel chains aimed at savvy young business travelers have walk-in showers
instead of tubs.
This means
Universal Design can equal high design, NOT dreary old hospital architecture.
THE ESSENTIAL TOOL FOR INTERGENERATIONAL COMMUNITIES
While Mace
used a wheelchair for mobility, he very intentionally did NOT call his creation
disability design or wheelchair access design.
That’s
because a barrier-free built environment works for everybody.
Wide
sidewalks with no speed limit signs or utility poles plopped down in the center
of them serve everybody of every age.
A street
with curb ramps and level entrances to buildings makes life inclusive for
people with mobility disabilities but it also makes life easy for those pushing
strollers.
A crossing
time longer than the standard 30 seconds—to make it safely past four or six
lanes of traffic—saves the life of a child who hesitates or bolts away from mom
as much as it provides more protection for a wheelchair user rolling to work.
Some cities
are raising crosswalks, so they are level with the sidewalk on both sides of
the street.
This not
only makes it easier for the one in four people that have some level of
disability, but it also forces speeding cars to slow down and obey a stop sign
or red light.
WITH THE OHIO REALTORS THIS MONTH
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I've contributed Universal Design expertise to the National Association of REALTORS for 20+ years.
We all
deserve to live barrier-free.
I would love
to speak – in person (best) or virtually (still great) to your downtown
authority, business improvement district, AIA or APA chapter, school of
architecture or healthy living nonprofit.
Please email
me at stevewright64@yahoo.com
ACCESS FOR ALL GUIDE TO LISBON
Steep
topography, narrow winding alleys, centuries old buildings, historic trams --
the very things that make Lisbon so charming -- create difficulty for those who
use wheelchairs for mobility.
That why we're
so impressed with Lisbon’s guide to wheelchair access.
First off,
we appreciate that the introduction, written by the then deputy mayor for social
rights, acknowledges that the city has a long way to go to provide the kind of
inclusion that people with disabilities deserve.
The second thing we like is the specific details.
Many times, a route to an attraction is
mapped – with routes that are independent and route that don’t have steps, but
may have cobblestones so bumpy that a wheelchair may requires a companion to
help navigate.
The
attractions themselves have vivid details. So you know if one floor of a museum
is barrier-free, but other parts are not.
Elevators, accessible restrooms, direct links to the attractions and other fine details make the guide an excellent English-language wheelchair access guide to access to sunny Lisboa.
file:///C:/Users/User/Downloads/lisbon-accessible-tourism-cml.pdf
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