ALBERT PALLOT PARK -- CITY OF MIAMI

TOO MUCH PAVEMENT CAN DESTROY A PARK – SOME IS NEEDED TO PROVIDE BARRIER-FREE WHEELCHAIR ACCESS FOR ALL

Albert Pallot Park is a three-acre oasis on Biscayne Bay in the Edgewater Neighborhood.

It is immediately north of the Julia Tuttle Causeway, two blocks east of Biscayne Boulevard at Northeast 38th Street.

The urban park features a wheelchair-accessible paved path along the bay front and through the park.

When a developer paid more than $2 million for improvements, including a sea wall, many neighbors and activists complained about the amount of concrete.

We have fought to protect historic William Jennings Bryan Park for being paved over, so we empathize.

However, there are two sides to the story.

Much of Miami’s bay front is off limits to all and even less of it is accessible to people with disabilities.

A grand, wide, flowing path from the two accessible parking spaces to the water’s edge is exactly what is needed to make the park welcoming to all people of all abilities.

There is a huge swatch of pavement along the entire bay front of the park – and it is deep, maybe 30 feet deep.

That might be overkill. Perhaps something 12 to 15 feet deep would have left more natural grass. But paving from edge to edge of the bay front is not problematic – as it provides one of the few locations where people in power and manual wheelchairs, or scooters and rolling walkers, can all enjoy barrier-free access.

There also is a giant M made of dominoes.

We’d like to think it stands for Miami, the Magic City.

It perhaps memorializes the surname of the developer family, whose late founding father had a history of federal discrimination complaints/cases that goes against everything we believe in, in terms of equality, inclusion and diversity.

ADA COMPLIANCE IS IMPORTANT

 BUT UNIVERSAL DESIGN TRANSCENDS THE ADA

Inclusionary zoning, progressive housing policy, and equitable planning strategies have failed people with disabilities.

One college course on Universal Design would equip young planners with the knowledge/skills required to change this half century of failure.

The video on this link shares to Universal Design concept in clear, concise “mom and pop” language.

Thanks to Andrés Corrales, CNU-A, a friend and colleague in Miami who works as a New Urbanist Urban Development Consultant, for sending the video to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mh-GTlvf0w&list=RDCMUCGc8ZVCsrR3dAuhvUbkbToQ&index=1

Andres Corrales

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mh-GTlvf0w&list=RDCMUCGc8ZVCsrR3dAuhvUbkbToQ&index=1

MY WIFE WOULD LIKE TO RIDE HER WHEELCHAIR INTO HEAVEN

OBSERVATIONS ON THE DISABLED AFTERLIFE 

What's wrong with this picture?

A whole F—king lot, that’s what.

You see, my wife has used a wheelchair for mobility for 40+ years.

It’s a liberation device, not some prison-like ball and chain.

Able bodied people don’t get that.

This illustration, of Stephen Hawking walking into heaven. It’s pure BS.

So you say, “maybe the cartoonist was well-meaning, he/she only wanted to show Hawking free of pain and confinement.”

I say, if that’s what you think, your opinion toward people with disabilities is as bigoted and dark ages stupid as thinking a black person would like the be referred to as “a credit to his race” or a Jewish person would feel all warm and fuzzy if they overheard you saying “they are so good with money, they can make a dollar bill scream.”

I hope, even in the backsliding Neanderthal world of POTUS 45, you all cringed at the two examples above and saw them for what they are – intolerable, inappropriate stereotypes…and worse.

Well, when a person with a disability sees that image of Hawking, they see the not so subtle meaning.  Only when you are dead and ridden of your disability, are you a truly whole, complete and heaven-worthy person.

That is disgusting, wretched, wrong-headed.

Still disagree?  Okay, this for every person of color.

Say you are African American. Would you feel all gratified if a cartoon depicted you shedding all your black skin into a pile…because you truly could only be pure enough to enter the vast, joyful afterlife with white skin?

If you are Jewish. Would you rush to forward a cartoon to all your friends – that shows you casting off a star of David and setting fire to the Torah…face beaming with joy as you glance at the Christian cross. Because you must shed your faith to be worthy of the only true heaven?

If you are part of the LGBT community. How happy would you be to see an editorial cartoon of a gay person renouncing who they are…and gleefully running into a wedding scene of one man and one woman – joining a “holy” union so they can finally defeat the evil, ghastly, dirty, filthy horror that it was to be gay or  transgender? Would you not be gravely offended by folks believing the only way you could walk up those sacred steps to the promised land was if you renounced your LGBT ways?

If I haven’t showed you the soul-crushing hatred that ableism visits on people with disabilities each minute of each day, them I give up.

You are beyond hope.

For those of you that now get it. Please go forth in a world made better by diversity and know my wife is part of the rich tapestry of life…wheelchair used for mobility and all.