ancient cities

normally in everyday life. Hence, disability is
located in the individual and understood in terms
of the limitations of a “less than normal” body.
This medicalized definition has arguably dominated
understandings of disability in Western
society. However, since the 1970s this definition
has been challenged by disabled people, who
have critiqued its representation of disability as a
personal tragedy and disabled people as dependent
and worthy of charity. In setting out a social
model of disability, an emergent disability movement
has located the “problem” of disability
within the structures and social relations of a
society that systematically ignores the needs of
people with impairments.
Proponents of the social model draw a distinction
between the terms impairment, as the actual
bodily limitation or physiological state, and disability,
as the construction of a society that devalues
impaired bodies, thereby leading to disabled
people’s economic, political, social, and cultural
marginalization. According to the social model, it
is within the structures and organization of society
rather than in disabled people’s physiology or
impairment that we are to find the answers to
questions about disabled people’s unequal status.
The model has become the basis for the development
of a disability movement that stresses disabled
people’s rights as citizens and calls for their
equal participation in society. However, this model
has been criticized for underplaying the bodily
pain that many disabled people experience, as well
as for more readily explaining the experiences of
people with physical or mobility impairments,
rather than those with learning disabilities or mental
illness. It has thereby been accused of failing to
address the heterogeneity of disability.
Barriers in the Disabling City
The insights of the social model nevertheless open
up an understanding of the ways in which the contemporary
city serves to disable individuals through
its social, political, and economic organization. A
key locus of debates about disabled people’s access
to the city lies in the built environment, whether
this be understood as public thoroughfares, private
and public buildings (including places of consumption,
workplaces, civic amenities, and housing), or
indeed transport systems. The barriers that render
the city environment inaccessible are often clear to
Disability and the City
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see: For example, for people with mobility impairments
or wheelchair users, the absence of ramps
into buildings, doorways that are too narrow, or
broken paving stones are huge impediments. For
others, they are less visible: A lack of clear and
simple signage for people with learning difficulties,
or the absence of induction loops for people with
hearing impairments, mediate the experience of
access. The presence of these barriers in the built
environment hinders disabled people’s ability to
move around unaided and limits their participation
in city life, whether as consumers, workers, or
as members of local groups or communities. The
physical fabric of the city has therefore been seen
as a spatial manifestation of disabled people’s
oppression in society, reflecting a historical legacy
in which many disabled people were sequestered
away from society and thus came to be seen as
“out of place” in urban environments and public
space.
These barriers point to the need to explore
the broader political, economic, and institutional
processes that give rise to the creation of disabling
urban spaces. The policies and practices of
urban planning and development systems form
an important institutional context here. Within
these systems, professionals—architects, property
developers, and local planning officials—have
been shown to play a key role in creating the
built environment and influencing outcomes in
terms of access. Frequently, these outcomes are
shaped by the imperatives of architectural aesthetics,
economic efficiency, or both, rather than
accessibility for disabled people. Such recognition
has led the United States and many European
countries to address the issue of access through
the introduction of planning regulations and
policies, and in some cases, antidiscrimination
legislation. The U.K. Disability Discrimination
Act 1995, for example, suggests that providers of
goods and services and employers should make
“reasonable adjustments” for disabled people,
including, where appropriate, access to workplaces
or other premises. However, although
such regulations are seen to offer some form of
safeguard against discrimination, they have been
criticized for their voluntaristic nature and a reliance
on technical solutions to disabled people’s
exclusion.
Many disability scholars have stressed that the
barriers disabled people experience in the city