Follow Ben '09

Monday 11th May.

It begins with what are here called 'curb cuts': the shallow concrete ramps installed at intervals so that people in wheelchairs can access the pavement (or 'sidewalk'). These innovations were pioneered by the disability rights activist Ed Roberts during the 1970s in, guess where, Berkeley, California. Since the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), all pavements in the US are required to have them. The process through which such adaptations are arrived at is known as Inclusive Design (or Universal Design by some): the discipline dedicated to generating environmental designs accessable to a diverse population of users. By designing an environment (civic, professional, commercial) to be accessable to a range of people with different needs you (obviously) make it more likely that people will encounter members of their community they wouldn't otherwise (those who are typically excluded or disabled by their environment). What else? There is the suggestion that the inclusive agenda also gives rise to greater and more radical design innovations - developments that ultimately benefit swathes of the populous not originally targeted. Curb cuts - who uses them? Wheel chair users, certainly. But who else? Rollerbladers, people with pushchairs (baby buggies), people with shopping trollies, people with luggage on wheels, people making deliveries with boxes on carts, people pushing their bicycles. And able-bodied pedestrians. Because, actually, a ramp is more comfortable to walk down than a step. Slopes are quite nice places to be. As I say, this is just the beginning, the germ. Later this week I am meeting a couple who specialise in this area. They are currently involved in a project designing a venue where senior citizens and younger people will be encouraged/enabled to mix. When a person has a problem, there are two possible responses. The first, the one preferred by medicine and its allies, is to change the person. The second, it turns out, is the province of designers and engineers: change the environment. This dyad (individual vs. environment) is well known to rehabilitation professionals. In the Clubhouses I have seen the latter (environmental cognitive supports) in action - notices, labeling, reminders. These are a staple for many people after brain injury. But I wonder what would happen if this were taken further, if it were placed in front of professionals who are equipped to elaborate it to the urban scale, to the level of architecture, landscape, planning. I don't know what the results would look like, but I have a desire to find out.

Jon, from Berkeley, who I spoke to the other night about the rising floods, told me something else. He was talking about visits he has made to India and Pakistan, about the single most efficient civilizing measure he has encountered. A single developmental rule under which anti-terrorism, ecological and economic stability and political moderation can be simultaneously guaranteed. "Build girls' schools," he said. If this is true (and I can believe it is) it is an example of an intervention that cuts across levels of description and action, integrating change at the cognitive, cultural, social, political and psychological levels. If there is such a thing as 'rehabilitation', I would say this, as an idea, merits the term.