I LOVE THE 100 YEARS OF ART DECO IN MIAMI BEACH EXHIBIT

I’D LOVE IT MORE IF A REDESIGN PROVIDED WHEELCHAIR ACCESS

THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE OUTDOOR GALLERY

100 Years of Art Deco in Miami Beach features 100+ images from around the world create a visual journey through the evolution of Art Deco.

In the spirit of inclusion, I wish the journey through Lummus Park was more wheelchair accessible.

I adore the Miami Design Preservation League & will forever be grateful for its exhibit of my photography.

But I do challenge it to use temporary interlocking plastic pavers to make the entire Art Deco 100 exhibit accessible to people with disabilities.

The exhibit runs through January, so there is plenty of time to fine tune its accessibility and Universal Design.

The Miami Beach Pride Festival and Parade uses heavy plastic interlocking mat material to provide wheelchair access and inclusion on the beach sand.

That same product could enhance access along the mushy grass and varying topography of Lummus Park.

BOUNDLESS (BY AUTHOR ALEX NORMAN)

REAL STORIES AND PRACTICAL STRATEGIES FOR INCLUSIVE LIVING

As a Universal Design writer, educator, planner and advocate -- I applaud Alex Norman for authoring BOUNDLESS: Real Stories and Practical Strategies for Inclusive Living. 

In these troubling time of pushback against equity/inclusion for People with Disabilities, we need books that focus on Universal Design.

From the book blurb:

In Boundless: Real Stories and Practical Strategies for Inclusive Living, Alex Norman and Garrett Mayersohn share personal stories, lived experiences, and practical strategies to help readers identify and remove hidden barriers that exclude millions of people every day, often without us realizing it.

Through these real-world insights and the seven proven principles of Universal Design, this book offers practical ways to create environments where everyone feels welcome and empowered, no matter their age, ability, or background.

Amazon: https://a.co/d/8v2se4J

I AM HONORED TO BE QUOTED AS A UNIVERSAL DESIGN EXPERT IN MY FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE CHARLES T. BROWN’S ISLAND PRESS BOOK:

ARRESTED MOBILITY – 

OVERCOMING THE THREAT TO BLACK MOVEMENT

Steve Wright, disability rights advocate and professor of Universal Design at the University of Miami School of Architecture, believe that there can be a middle-ground solution (to the issue of conflicts of sidewalk use and safety between those who uses wheelchairs for mobility and cyclists/scooter riders.)

“It’s an interim and if we…make a strong case for infrastructure that’s humane…we can have a very wide sidewalk and we can have a bike land and we can have some sort of marked lane for scooters,” he says.

“The idea that this is weaponized…the idea that a Brown or Black person has maybe had a 50/50 chance of getting a ticket or being called over and read the riot act…that’s not a world that I want to live in.”

I have spent my life as a writer, planner, educator and advocate – working the create a better built environment for marginalized people.

I was proud to be on one of Brown’s first Arrested Mobility podcasts, sharing my expertise in hurdles to mobility experienced by people with disabilities, especially wheelchair users.

I have been gratified to work as a Universal Design subconsultant to Brown’s Equitable Cities -- an urban planning, public policy, and research firm
working at the intersection of transportation, health, and equity.

                                                    Charles Brown

ONE MILLION BLOG READERS

NEVER BACKING DOWN

This week, my blog received its one millionth unique visitor.

I have been blogging daily for more than a decade.

Sometimes I have posted beautiful photos from exotic travel.

Certainly this space has served as a bully pulpit to scold lousy government services and terrible companies.

A few times, I have shared photos of my cats – or tragically, a tribute to one who went over the Rainbow Bridge.

But more than 90 percent of my posts are related to disability advocacy.

Most of those point out flaws in the built environment.

With all due respect, our planners, architects, engineers, builders and municipalities that regulate them have had more than a third of a century under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to get it right.

But the vast majority continue to push back, resist and even go to court to try to get out of the responsibility of observing federal civil rights legislation that guarantees equal access for people with disabilities.

Hundreds of local governments – and related transit, redevelopment and similar agencies – still design sidewalks, parks, buildings, transit systems, airports and much of the built environment in ways that isolate and dehumanized people with disabilities.

Sadly, with a plethora of lawsuits against the ADA and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, a stacked Supreme Court may strip away basic dignity and independence of people with disabilities.

In case you are wondering, the CDC has documented that one in four people experience disability in their lifetime. That is more than 85 million Americans. Globally, the WHO has recognized that there are far more than 1 billion people with disabilities.

Not only is a level playing field a basic human right. But it also makes economic sense.

In addition to the staggering loss of dignity and quality of life, it costs trillions to warehouse people instead of mainstreaming them.

It costs dimes on the dollar to create inclusive spaces and places.

Once that is done, the rampant under- and unemployment of people with disabilities can become a thing of the past.

Catastrophically, our White House, Senate and Congress and far too many governors and state legislators  -- seem hellbent on reducing the inclusion gained under nearly 35 years of the ADA.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is the very definition of a Democracy – it is the core fiber of what it means to be in the United States. But the savage right wing would like to reframe DEI as something as loathsome as fascism.

This blog will never back down from championing DEI, especially in the lens of disability.

Not even if it costs me clients and work.

Not even if it places me in the crosshairs of an authoritarian government goose stepping its way toward a Nazi police state.

I will risk my nest egg, career and freedom – defending my right to underscore ableism and other treacherous acts of hatred toward the disability community.

Give me the liberty to be an ally, or give me death.

THERE IS NO DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION

WITHOUT DISABILITY

I support Diversity, Equity & Inclusion 100% 

Sadly, 90% of the time I am bitterly disappointed because those framing it completely exclude disability.

I met with a VP of DEI from a major university.

They point blank said disability won't be part of its DEI for foreseeable future.

The blatant exclusion of disability from DEI -- MUST be fixed.

People with disabilities are by far the most under and unemployed of all marginalized groups.

Not because of their disability, but because of structural ableism.

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT STRATEGIES FOR DIVERSE POPULATIONS

AVOID THE SINS OF THE PAST BY GETTING 

MEANINGFUL INPUT FROM MARGINALIZED PEOPLE

Community groups, nonprofit organizations, tribal governments, national parks, plus local, state and federal agencies can apply for technical assistance.

A National Park Service’s (NPS) case study highlighted Backman Elementary School in Salt Lake City, Utah, “home to a vibrant and diverse community.”

But many students’ only route to school was walking along a busy highway with no sidewalk.

The NPS team involved the students in meetings to plan for a safe pedestrian bridge to connect to local neighborhoods and an outdoor education and nature area along the river corridor.

For truly reflective community input and planning, all voices must be heard and included.

 

 

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT STRATEGIES FOR DIVERSE POPULATIONS

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MEANINGFUL INPUT FROM MARGINALIZED PEOPLE

An important voice in planning too often forgotten is our youth. 

The National Park Service’s (NPS) Youth Stewardship program wisely “works to involve youth in the planning of conservation and outdoor recreation projects as part of the community engagement process.”

The Rivers, Trails and Conservation Assistance program of the NPS has a more than 30-year record of supporting local conservation and outdoor recreation projects — including planning that includes youth input.

The NPS realizes that while children are often the primary beneficiaries of parks and recreation, their thoughts and feelings are rarely taken into consideration in the planning and design process.

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT STRATEGIES FOR DIVERSE POPULATIONS

AVOID THE SINS OF THE PAST BY GETTING 

MEANINGFUL INPUT FROM MARGINALIZED PEOPLE

A city cannot simply state it wants its planning to reflect the community; it must commit to making community engagement easy for diverse audiences.

“Provide a meal, have childcare, have translation/native speakers — have it at times that are best for the community,” said Artie Padilla, DRIVE Initiative Director for the Central Valley Community Foundation.

“You have to have an informed community by providing on ramps to learning for our residents. You also should pay stipends to participants.

We have a saying here — NFL — No Free Labor.”

Neighborhood leaders strategizing on how to recruit 400 residents to an event.

Padilla said businesses used to get tax credits or other incentives simply because they promised to create jobs.

Now people are asking during the planning/land-use entitlement process, “are they full-time with benefits, are they good jobs, and are they going to be sustainable?”

In South Fresno, large distribution centers are still being built, Padilla said, but now a community benefits agreement uses a portion of revenues to fund infrastructure improvements in surrounding, previously neglected neighborhoods.

 

 

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT STRATEGIES FOR DIVERSE POPULATIONS

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MEANINGFUL INPUT FROM MARGINALIZED PEOPLE

Artie Padilla, DRIVE Initiative Director for the Central Valley Community Foundation, said cities could benefit by duplicating Fresno, California’s strong presence of nonprofits doing place-based planning.

Families living in unstable housing discuss their needs and desires to find more stable housing and opportunities for their kids.

“The city of Fresno has learned if they don’t do things in an equitable, relatable way, they’re going to be called out,” Padilla said of planning for housing, mobility, parks, the environment and more.

“The mayor even created a department of community engagement.”

Community development should be based on assets — and the assets always are the people who live in the impacted area.

Padilla said planning needs to start with nothing locked in stone. Community development should be based on assets — and the assets always are the people who live in the impacted area.

“In the past, city officials would say everybody likes parks, so they just built a park. Now, it has to be culturally responsible and super inclusive for people with disabilities,” he said.

 

 

 

 

 

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT STRATEGIES FOR DIVERSE POPULATIONS

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MEANINGFUL INPUT FROM MARGINALIZED PEOPLE

The city of Philadelphia’s language access element of the toolkit uses a quote to drive home the isolation someone can feel, despite their having every right to full city services:

“For someone like me, who doesn’t have good English, it’s very difficult to visit [city buildings].

I always have to bring someone who speaks English because it’s hard to find an interpreter through the phone or in-person.

It’s very inconvenient.” — Community Member.

The language guide has sage advice for serving the nearly 22 percent of Americans who speak a language that is not English at home.

“When we don’t prioritize language access, some community members will plan their own accommodations or won’t participate at all.

That causes linguistically diverse communities to take on inequitable burdens that fluent English speakers don’t experience.

And that can lead to conflict, delays, and miscommunication in our engagements,” according to the toolkit.

 

 

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT STRATEGIES FOR DIVERSE POPULATIONS

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MEANINGFUL INPUT FROM MARGINALIZED PEOPLE

In mid-2023, the city of Philadelphia’s Office of Civic Engagement and Volunteer Service and the PHL Service Design Studio launched the Equitable Community Engagement Toolkit website.

The site has more than two dozen guides covering “project planning, evaluation, accessibility, languages access, and how to center racial equity in engagement.”

“We’ve worked with over 160 colleagues and community members to inform the vision and guidance of the Engagement Toolkit.

We’ve been transformed by this work and the care our collaborators have shown in sharing their lived expertise with us,” said Andrea Ngan, lead service design strategist.

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT STRATEGIES FOR DIVERSE POPULATIONS

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MEANINGFUL INPUT FROM MARGINALIZED PEOPLE

Andreanecia Morris, executive director of HousingNOLA, advocates for rigorous public engagement backstopped by data.

She said data shows a planning and leadership failure in the Lower Ninth, where only 40 percent of pre-Katrina housing exists, despite nearly two decades of rebuilding schemes floated after the storm.

Morris said planners should view housing as an essential need, not a status symbol.

She said lack of stable, affordable housing gets in the way of education, health care, job opportunities, criminal justice reform — everything that impacts all communities, but hits marginalized areas the hardest.

Morris said stats show a major disconnect between assets in New Orleans and a methodical plan to solve affordable housing.

“New Orleans has a 23-percent rate of occupiable homes and apartments,” she said, emphasizing that nearly one-fourth of the city’s units could become an affordable dwelling unit with just some minor fixups before move in.

 

 

 

 

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT STRATEGIES FOR DIVERSE POPULATIONS

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Amy Stelly said parachute planning, when outsiders produce quick fixes for complex problems, rarely helps a marginalized community.

When Hurricane Katrina decimated New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward, one of the first planning suggestions was to abandon the historically Black community rather than building stronger levees and rebuilding.

Then some well-meaning, but misguided foundations, — some backed by celebrities — built structures that were out of place, and despite a slew of technology in their design, did not weather well.

Vacant lots still scar the neighborhood where Fats Domino and other music legends grew up or lived.

 

 

 

 

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT STRATEGIES FOR DIVERSE POPULATIONS

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MEANINGFUL INPUT FROM MARGINALIZED PEOPLE

While she campaigns to remove the Claiborne Expressway — lamenting that local leaders fumbled an opportunity so badly that New Orleans received only a fraction of federal funds aimed at reconnecting communities by removing freeways that divided and partially destroyed them — Amy Stelly fears another project could cause damage.

Stelly -- a planner, designer, teacher and artist -- said a viaduct to serve new port cargo storage could not only hurt the environment, but also impose more concrete and pollution on lower-income, not influential communities.

Redlining is illegal, but Stelly said it effectively exists because banks are leery of lending money to a business virtually underneath an ugly, noisy freeway.

And grand homes near the viaduct still may only have a third of the value that they would enjoy if they were in a neighborhood without a destructive freeway.

 

 

 

 

 

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT STRATEGIES FOR DIVERSE POPULATIONS

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MEANINGFUL INPUT FROM MARGINALIZED PEOPLE

As an artist, one of Amy Stelly’s strategies was to go out and take photographs of real people in the neighborhood — shunning the clip art virtual beings often dragged into 2-D renderings to portray people in a plan.

“The best way for us to speak to one another, especially in the Black community, was to see ourselves,” said.

Amy Stelly, planner, designer, teacher.

Stelly cautions against falsely mitigating the destruction of ugly infrastructure that rips though a community, saying painting hundreds of concrete supports or staging a market beneath freeway pollution does not resolve the problem.

“We can’t just put lipstick on the pig. Lipstick on the pig doesn’t remove the pig,” she said.

 

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT STRATEGIES FOR DIVERSE POPULATIONS

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MEANINGFUL INPUT FROM MARGINALIZED PEOPLE

Amy Stelly — a planner, designer, teacher and artist — has studied the health and economic impacts of New Orleans’ Claiborne Expressway, which has been recognized as “an example of historic inequity” by the Biden administration.

Until the 1960s, Claiborne Avenue was filled with live oaks trees and azaleas along a grassy median.

It was heart of the Tremé neighborhoods’ Black commerce and culture. 

By the end of the ‘60s, trees were gone and 18 blocks were dominated by endless concrete pilings holding up Interstate 10.

It became the poster child for tearing down freeways that destroyed communities, yet it still stands.

Stelly has documented air and noise pollution, loss of property value and other ill effects of an era when planners routinely ignored, and major projects ran roughshod over, minority communities.

Stelly said Black communities “have been rained on for most of their existence,” building mistrust.

 

 

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT STRATEGIES FOR DIVERSE POPULATIONS

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MEANINGFUL INPUT FROM MARGINALIZED PEOPLE

“In Lexington, Ky., the planning department combined with the elderly affairs commission to address the need for more types of housing options,” said Mike Watson, director of Livable Communities at AARP.

“A goal was to amend city code to make it easier to permit and build accessory dwelling units (ADUs).

The University of Kentucky College of Design used a Community Challenge grant to fund a competition to create models of different types of ADUs that were accessible [to people with disabilities].”

Watson said there was some opposition to adding housing, but the ADUs had intergenerational appeal.

A series of community events showed why the ADUs were needed.

 

 

 

 

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT STRATEGIES FOR DIVERSE POPULATIONS

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MEANINGFUL INPUT FROM MARGINALIZED PEOPLE

Communities that want to jump-start planning efforts, such as traffic-calming or zoning changes, can apply for AARP’s Community Challenge — a grant that funds about $12,000 in planning support.

More than $16 million has been given to more than 1,370 initiatives.

“The advice I would give folks, to reach diverse stakeholders, is step out of your perspective and your comfort zone,” said Mike Watson, director of Livable Communities at AARP.

“Surveys are helpful, but there is a difference between a survey on a website and going to where the people are and actively listening.

Go to an inviting place, like a coffee shop, for authentic input. You may need to create a comfortable place by creating a pop-up demonstration.”

Watson said some cities don’t change to keep up with community needs out of fear of opposition — opposition that might not be there.

 

 

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT STRATEGIES FOR DIVERSE POPULATIONS

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MEANINGFUL INPUT FROM MARGINALIZED PEOPLE

Mike Watson, director of Livable Communities at AARP, said the 38-million-member interest group champions bottom-up planning — working in more than 1,000 communities to support local efforts to create age-friendly communities.

Watson said planning for seniors could be as simple as creating a plan for wide, unobstructed, accessible sidewalks and safe crosswalks.

AARP has developed a free online Walk Audit Toolkit to empower communities to “assess and report on the safety and walkability of a street, intersection or neighborhood — and inspire needed change.”

“Walk audits are such an important way to increase pedestrian safety through neighborhood design that engages neighborhood residents, activists, elected officials and city staff,” he said.

“AARP state offices have done thousands of them and it’s such an important learning tool to show pedestrian mobility issues through different perspectives. 

Bring the department of public works director, the city council member, or the mayor out to see barriers to moving about, pushing a stroller or rolling in a wheelchair.”

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT STRATEGIES FOR DIVERSE POPULATIONS

AVOID THE SINS OF THE PAST BY GETTING 

MEANINGFUL INPUT FROM MARGINALIZED PEOPLE

Cynicism from bad experiences can be addressed by involving people with disabilities in the design and planning processes from the outset, including research design.

“Collaboratively develop inclusive and accessible strategies that reflect the diverse needs and preferences of participants.

Endorse community representatives to co-facilitate meetings, review materials, and shape decision-making processes,” said Karin Korb, a public health consultant and a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion professional. She is also a two-time Paralympian tennis player who uses a wheelchair for mobility.

Korb said. “By co-creating the engagement process, planners demonstrate a commitment to shared ownership and accountability.”