Accessible Urban and Suburban Futures

complete street with paved sidewalks, bicycle lanes, and streets — **Image Description:** A “complete street” with paved sidewalks, bicycle lanes, and streets for car traffic, with trees forming a barrier between the bicycle lane and the street. In the background, an apartment building.

Can Cities Desire Disability?

Contemporary movements for walkability and sustainability often imagine futures in which disability has been eliminated or prescribe solutions that would create accessibility barriers. Through projects such as Enlivened City, Mapping Access, and collaborations with students and urban planners, we are working on alternative visions of the livable, regenerative city that recognize disability access as a necessary dimension of the good urban life.

Upcoming Events

Imagining Access Organized by Jarah Moesch

Workshop 1: Sunday, Dec 2, 1pm
General Survey & Map-Making
Workshop 2: Sunday, Feb 17, 1pm
Storytelling, Design & Future Constellations

How do you imagine the future of accessible suburban transportation? Many greenway trails were designed for recreational purposes, not for daily commuting. When transportation is encouraged, it is usually in relation to public health and climate change, not disability or economic accessibility.

How might we design a new constellation of accessibilities- across economic, disability, weather, and historical patterns that are already in place? How might we imagine it differently than it is now? Can we plan for radically different accessible futures that are not only car-focused?

Explore these ideas in a series of workshops - run by artist-scholar Jarah Moesch - that will assess one section of a local trail through audits, conversations, surveying and other hands-on design practices.