Engaging Disability Theory in Planning Practice

Ableism and Systemic Inattention to Disability in Planning

Built environments serving some while excluding others is, at least in part, attributable to a long-time ableist understanding of the human body. “Ableism” can be understood as the favoritism for certain abilities and a corresponding disregard for those lacking favored abilities (Goodley 2014; Wolbring 2008). An ableist understanding of the body perpetuates an unquestioned, normative understanding of bodies that disregards the diversity of the human experience (Imrie 2003). Our collective failure to recognize ableism or question the exclusion it perpetuates enables ableism to persist in the planning field and our communities. For example, of the millions of people using inaccessible subway stations each day in global cities, how many ponder that the station designs (and thus the subway systems) may challenge and exclude people with physical, sensory, intellectual, or developmental disabilities? Furthermore, do people visiting inaccessible restaurants and shops acknowledge that these places are exclusionary to disabled people, the world’s largest minority group (United Nations Development Programme 2018)? This remarkable lack of attention to disabled people’s exclusion from our planned environment reveals how profoundly normalized their exclusion remains.

Inattention to disability endures even as accessibility and inclusion issues receive attention globally (e.g., Canada’s aforementioned provincial and federal legislation; the 2019 European Accessibility Act). At the same time, accessibility legislation has been under threat in the United States in recent years. ³ Planning ⁴ and related fields (e.g., architecture ⁵ and property development ⁶ ) have a history of overlooking disability. Planners ⁷ not focused specifically on urban design appear to be reticent about engaging issues facing disabled people (Terashima and Clark 2021). It has been argued that planning practitioners have treated disabled people as an invisible constituency (Pineda 2008) and that although progress has been made in accessibility policy and regulation, disability remains peripheral to planning policy and practice (McCormick et al. 2019). Planning scholarship has also mostly ignored disability and is, arguably, disconcertingly ableist. In their systematic review titled, “The Precarious Absence of Disability Perspectives in Planning Research,” Terashima and Clark (2021) found only thirty-six articles relevant to disabled people—and only twenty focused on them specifically—among 1,107 issues of five mainstream planning journals of the English-speaking world. In short, “fewer than two papers focused on people with disabilities have been published per decade by the journals” (Terashima and Clark 2021, 127). This, of course, does not mean that scholars have not engaged with planning questions in articles published in other subject journals, such as disability studies. With our graying demographics and our already-significant proportion of disabled people, addressing the lack of engagement with disability in planning research and practice is both desirable and urgent (Terashima and Clark 2021). Unless and until planning practitioners and scholars (and others whose work influences the built environment) acknowledge, explore, and advance their understandings of disability, environments that are normatively ordered to favor able populations will persist, even as some people’s (lack of) participation in these environments is questioned.

Some planning policy and processes offer evidence of disability being approached as a supplementary matter and thus treated inconsistently or ignored entirely. In Canada, it is not uncommon for municipalities to prepare design guidelines or standards specifically for accessibility (e.g., City of Mississauga 2015; City of Ottawa 2015; City of Toronto 2021; City of Vancouver 2013). In preparing these documents separately from principal urban design guidelines and standards documents, disability and accessibility are arguably viewed and treated as isolated from and secondary to primary urban design concerns. Furthermore, if accessible design guidelines are not “given teeth” via authorizing municipal policy direction or regulation, they may very well receive supplementary treatment and not get consulted. This means that the aims of accessible design guidelines may go unrecognized and lead to inaccessible environments. For this reason, consideration should be given to consistently integrating accessible design guidelines and standards into (or appending them onto) major municipal planning documents that planners must consult regularly as a practical and meaningful move to promote inclusive environments.

In Ontario, disability’s inconsistent policy treatment in municipal official plans ⁸ leaves planners with varying responsibilities to account for disability experiences. Policy approaches range from leaving disability largely unmentioned (e.g., Town of Oakville 2009), to touching upon disability in a few policy discussions and directions (e.g., Town of Richmond Hill 2010), to substantial engagement in policy objectives and directions that consistently and explicitly consider disability (e.g., City of Brampton 2006). This variation means that planners’ levels of engagement and accountability pertaining to accessible design can differ significantly and, consequently, impacts how accessible design is implemented across municipalities. Municipalities and their residents would likely benefit from consistently heightening the level of policy attention and direction given to disability. For example, it could be useful if municipal plans stopped engaging disability and accessible design matters through abstract policy discussions and goals. Instead, they should engage these matters through tangible, explicit policy directions that acknowledge the frames through which disability is perceived.

Inattention to disability also persists within planning processes, sometimes in truly absurd ways. For example, after residents complained about City of Toronto planners booking a consultation event for an accessible/affordable housing project at a venue without an accessible entrance, planners re-booked the event at a location without an accessible washroom, thus rendering it inaccessible as well (Lavoie 2016). This sequence of events shows how planners at times do not understand what constitutes accessibility and, in turn, do not recognize accessibility issues, even when accessibility is a key project focus. In this case, the planners’ lacking knowledge of disability and accessibility forced disabled residents to take on extra work by advocating for themselves and teaching planners about accessibility. This treatment can place disabled people in a liminal position (i.e., simultaneously belonging and not belonging), or exclude them/us entirely.

Beyond this example of disability being treated as an afterthought, disability experiences are at times unnoticed or viewed as acceptable if caused by inaccessible elements that are temporary in nature. For example, sidewalks are at times open to the public, but rendered temporarily inaccessible to some due to construction (e.g., obstructions caused by trucks, supplies, scaffolding), insufficient snow/ice removal (e.g., snow windrows), storefront displays (e.g., sandwich board signs), and weekly garbage/recycling pick-up days (e.g., bins blocking sidewalks). ⁹ Planners should be encouraged to question how such inaccessible conditions are regularly produced and rationalized as merely temporary. After all, temporary inaccessibility still produces persistent difficulties and exclusions.

Limited understanding of disability in planning contributes to the normalized acceptance of temporary inaccessibility and “afterthought” treatments of disability in planning policy and process. To help address this limited understanding, planners should be encouraged to question how they understand and act toward disability, and to consider how their work can influence whether disabled people experience inclusion or exclusion. Being familiar with disability perspectives can aid such actions by helping planners to unbind themselves from reductionist, binary approaches to disability which, for expediency purposes, may gloss over questions about disability as an identity, embodied experiences of disability, and excluded viewpoints. Planners might employ a “radical openness” (Soja 1996) to disability perspectives when considering local planning conditions and how they are experienced. This could help them to question and remake disability’s codification in planning (i.e., the ways in which disability is accounted for in planning policy directions, regulations, and processes), its naturalization as exclusionary, and their own perspectives’ contradictions, contingencies, and internal resistance to change (Huyssen 1986, 217).

Below, we consider five key theoretical perspectives on disability to support growth in the recognition that disability is a dynamic, ever-evolving experience framed by cultural ways of knowing disability that warrants ongoing critical attention. We hope this assists planners with sensing that people with disabilities must not be understood nor acted toward as naturally excludable, and that any way we have of addressing disability is always tied to cultural perceptions of the relations between people and places (Titchkosky 2011). We also hope this discussion will encourage and equip planners to approach disability with greater awareness, forethought, and prudence, and to question the normalcy or naturalness of exclusion in daily disability experiences. We do not delve into each disability perspective in detail. Rather, we review perspectives’ key aspects, how each perspective can influence how we view and act toward planning situations, and we urge readers to further consider the perspectives. While we discuss five key perspectives, planners should be encouraged to consider others, such as the social relational model (Thomas 2004) and the phenomenological approach (Titchkosky 2011), to further question the frame or orientation they employ to perceive and understand disability. By becoming aware of and questioning how they know and act toward disability, planners can begin moving toward the possibility of changing and transforming their approach to disability inclusion.

The Medical, Social, and Biopsychosocial Models of Disability

Throughout much of the twentieth century, the medical model of disability proliferated. This model locates the “problem” of disability within the individual by viewing disability as one’s limitation(s) resulting from bodily impairment (Oliver 1996). Many fields ¹⁰ have criticized this model for treating disability as an individualized issue because this allows it to be subjected to little sociopolitical analysis and to be viewed as a personal tragedy (Oliver 1996, 32). This individualization leads to expectations that those with bodily impairments should come to terms with and overcome their difficult situations independently with the aid of therapeutic/medical intervention and/or assistance from only family and friends (Jongbloed and Crichton 1990). The model also leaves problematic conceptions of the “normal” body unquestioned, ignores social and environmental conditions beyond the body, and supports understanding disability as one’s “state of exceptionality” (Campbell 2009, 32). By conceptualizing disability as an individualized problem, a planner employing a medical model perspective is likely to undercut efforts to produce accessible and inclusive planned environments that welcome and serve people of all abilities. This planner, who views disability solely in medical terms (i.e., as bodily impairment), could be less likely to notice, take issue with, and address normalized social barriers causing experiences of disability and exclusion within planned environments, services, and systems (e.g., missing or poorly maintained ramps and curb cuts; inadequate accessible parking; pedestrian signals that do not offer enough time for some to cross a street safely), as well as planning processes (e.g., inaccessible aspects of public consultation event venues and materials).

While the medical model’s widespread criticism and rejections across fields are warranted, its focus could, in some cases, help planners to understand bodily impairments in medical terms (e.g., medical diagnoses and interventions). For example, if a planner is tasked with preparing a public consultation event for a mental health or rehabilitation facility project, using a medical model perspective could help them more fully understand the spatial/design needs of those with physical, sensory, intellectual, and/or developmental impairments who may participate in the event and those who may use the facility. This is not to suggest an application wherein the planner seeks curative or restorative action, or where they rest on a medical diagnosis of “disability”; rather, they could use the perspective to consider the possibilities intrinsic to the act of making things work for many bodies and not just for “some” bodies. For example, drawing upon the medical model could be useful to a planner preparing a school site plan or planning school transport services. This is demonstrated in a recent planning study about the school travel experiences of families living with childhood disability in Ontario’s Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (see Ross 2020; Ross and Buliung 2019). In this study, input was sought from children diagnosed with osteogenesis imperfecta—a chronic disease characterized by bone fragility and regular bone fractures. These children indicated that some of them experience fear of serious injury (i.e., bone fractures) while traveling over speed bumps built on and around school sites, using bus steps and lifts, and while moving through crowds; moreover, some indicated they must park off-site and travel along sidewalks (sometimes unsafely due to snow and ice) due to inadequate accessible parking on school sites (Ross 2020; Ross and Buliung 2019). Learning about the experiences and needs associated with these children’s specific medical/clinical circumstances led to the identification of planning issues that likely would have been missed otherwise. While the medical model can be useful, we strongly urge planners not to engage disability solely in medical terms due to the model’s troubling exclusion of non-medical aspects of disability experiences and its individualization of disability.

The social model of disability emerged from a rejection of the medical model’s asocial and individualistic assumptions (UPIAS 1976). Oliver (1996, 34) defines it as follows:

Disability . . . is all the things that impose restrictions on disabled people; ranging from individual prejudice to institutional discrimination, from inaccessible public buildings to unusable transport systems, from segregated education to excluding work arrangements, and so on. Further, the consequences of this failure do not simply and randomly fall on individuals but systematically upon disabled people as a group who experience this failure as discrimination institutionalized throughout society.

The social model’s relocation of disability from inside the body to outside the body is a useful tool for planners. This relocation can equip planners to recognize that barriers interwoven into societal spaces and processes that have not adequately accounted for the experiences of people with impairments can cause disability experiences. This model’s social focus helps planners to read a landscape’s accessibility and to identify and prevent barriers. For example, if a planner tasked with carrying out a public consultation event employs a social model perspective and is therefore focused on identifying and removing social and environmental barriers, they are likely to recognize and address an array of potential barriers as part of their event design (e.g., ensuring accessible parking, entrances, seating, washrooms, posters, and presentations; sending accessible public notices; inviting local disability organizations). Although useful for recognizing and addressing barriers, scholars have criticized the social model for excluding the body from its analytical scope (Goodley 2001; Hughes and Paterson 1997) and for failing to engage the idea that people might celebrate a disability identity (Goodley 2014, 7). Scholars have also taken issue with the model’s inability to capture “the complexities of disabled people’s fluid identities and shifting socio-spatial locations and/or positions” (Imrie and Edwards 2007, 634).

With the increased use of the social model, following decades of unquestioned use of the medical model, calls emerged for more nuanced approaches to disability that engaged matters such as identity, emotions, and socio-spatial/political contexts. This led to biopsychosocial (BPS) models that do not view disability as resulting from bodily impairment or exclusionary barriers. Rather, they approach disability as arising from a combination of physical (bio), emotional (psycho), and environmental (social) experiences (World Health Organization [WHO] 2001). Employing a BPS model may therefore involve considering an individual’s body, experiences/sentiments, how they live, and the environment and societal system(s) within which they operate (Engel 1977, 132). BPS model thinking has proliferated across various areas of policy and professional practice. In particular, the BPS model underpins the WHO-endorsed (2001) International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF). The ICF, which intends to offer a universally acceptable form of analysis of disability through “a unified and standard language and framework for the description of health and health-related states” (WHO 2001, as cited in Barnes 2011), has undergone criticism. Criticism has included how the ICF approaches impairment as a “significant variation from the statistical norm” (WHO 2001, as cited in Barnes 2011) and, in so doing, leaves overly normative understandings of what constitutes normal bodies and functions unquestioned. Furthermore, this approach does not address the fact that what constitutes “normal” health varies widely across geographies and cultures (Barnes 2011). Finally, while the ICF supports assessments of the different physical, emotional, and social aspects of people’s disability experiences, it does little in terms of supporting analyses of how these aspects interact to produce social exclusions, and how findings can be addressed in politics and policy (Barnes 2011). By aiming to advance a singular and static perspective on disability (one that views it as naturally disadvantageous) to facilitate quantitative analyses of disability (and rehabilitation services), the WHO’s use of BPS thinking has impeded alternative, progressive approaches to disability (Titchkosky and Aubrecht 2015).

While criticisms of the BPS model are warranted, it can be useful to planners. If the aforementioned planner tasked with carrying out a public consultation event were to employ BPS model thinking, they would be encouraged to question how people with different types of disabilities would physically and emotionally experience the event. For example, upon considering how an inaccessible event venue entrance could cause physical exclusion and unsafe physical risks, and prompt negative emotional experiences (e.g., anger, frustration, anxiety, sadness), the planner would more fully understand the importance of ensuring an accessible entrance and perhaps be more likely to act to ensure its accessibility.

Neoliberalism and Disability

While neoliberalism is not a disability perspective per se, we would be remiss to ignore its influence on disability experiences. This is because neoliberalism (i.e., the economic policy approach that emphasizes free markets and deregulation, privatization, minimal state intervention, and self-responsibility) penetrates much of present-day culture and holds sway in the coordination of everyday life, including disability experiences. Neoliberalism contributes to the production of ableism thanks to its desire for sameness among humans (Richardson 2005). Neoliberalism pleas for the (re)constitution of an idealized, hyper-normalized citizen who is autonomous, independent, work-ready, and productive (Goodley 2014, 26–27). Disabled people lacking any combination of these valued abilities who do not fit this idealized mold may experience varying degrees of exclusion in a world demanding normalized abilities (Goodley 2014, 28). In Canada, for example, people with developmental disabilities are facing a supportive housing crisis; they are spending years on supportive housing waitlists (Dubé 2016; Ontario Development Services Housing Task Force 2018; Viau 2019). In Ontario alone, waitlist totals for supportive housing increased from 12,000 to 15,700 between 2013 and 2017, and the numbers continue to grow (Ontario Development Services Housing Task Force 2018). This group’s diversity is arguably being viewed as beyond the scope of the hyper-normalized citizen concept that neoliberalism helps to perpetuate and, correspondingly, their housing needs have gone mostly unaccounted for in housing policy and the planning of communities.

Disability can be viewed through a neoliberal economic lens in terms of a person’s inability to participate in the workforce and how this affects productivity and economic consequences (e.g., at individual, employer, and government levels). In addition to viewing disability in terms of its workforce supply relations, an exponent of neoliberalism may very well engage disability in terms of market demand. That is, they may recognize people with disabilities and their stakeholders (e.g., family, friends, and employers) as a large group of under-served consumers who value accessibility as a good or service. Considering disability in these ways can give planners insight into how disability has bearing on economies and markets, and vice versa. This could help them to better understand and plan for disabled people’s workforce challenges in Canada ¹¹ and beyond (see United Nations 2017). Planners might also use this understanding as a tactic when advocating for accessibility. For example, in the absence of successfully applying a housing justice argument, a planner could strategically communicate a neoliberal market perspective to encourage members of the public to consider a region’s serious need for supportive housing (i.e., there is demand for supportive housing industry; therefore, it should be built). As another example, a planner might educate the public on the economic and market potentials of advancing accessibility (e.g., accelerating retail/tourism sector growth; increasing consumer demand; generating accessibility-related industries and global markets) (Moran 2014). Having said that neoliberal economic and market thinking can be useful for planners, we must strongly caution against engaging (or educating the public on) disability solely in neoliberal terms. Viewing disabled people solely in neoliberal terms could lead to their devaluation as only employees and/or consumers, which discounts the intrinsic value of their experiences, contributions, and personhoods. Considering disability only in economic or market terms can leave it understood as commodified and plugged into a neoliberal agenda. Moreover, it may eschew disability justice and rights. So, while it may be useful to consider neoliberal economic and market perspectives, it is wise to do so in conjunction with other disability perspectives, including, but not limited to, the other four perspectives discussed in this commentary.

The Critical Ableist Studies Perspective

Perspectives considered thus far offer little insight into how exclusionary disability experiences are normalized. However, the normalization of disability as excludable or beneath thought plays a central role in the ongoing production of inequality within everyday experiences of exclusion. Few would disagree that inaccessible, exclusionary designs yield unacceptable experiences, so is it not then sensible to ask, “how is it normal for people to regularly not notice or dismiss such designs and experiences?” A Critical Ableist Studies (CAS) (Campbell 2009; Goodley 2014; Wolbring 2008) perspective helps with looking into the normalcy of exclusionary disability experiences by supporting an understanding of disability that includes ableism and its impact on normative order in its scope. Ableist beliefs produce a shared normalized understanding of the human being that discounts aspects of diversity in favor of supporting an overly normative human being/body concept (e.g., adult, white, male, autonomous, upright-standing, fit, rational, productive, readily employable, mobile, having sufficient capital). This understanding quietly “okays” treating those without idealized qualities as a “justifiably-excludable type” (Titchkosky 2011, 78), as demonstrated by the countless planned environments that overlook their difference. Ableist planned environments perpetuate the “editing out” (in varying degrees) of those who lack any combination of the idealized qualities (Campbell 2009; Goodley 2014).

A CAS perspective could help planners to recognize that ordinary practices and assumptions are “informed by the primacy of normalcy” (Titchkosky 2011, 4), including those within the planning field. The perspective questions how normalcy is produced and experienced first and then, secondarily, how disability is produced and experienced as a result. It does so by embracing intersectionality (Crenshaw 1991). That is, the perspective acknowledges that engagement with disability experiences necessitates encounters with experiences of other forms of social difference (e.g., race, gender, class, sexuality, age) and questions about how experiences of each can and do affect one another (Goodley 2014). It is not disability “or” race/racism that is considered; rather, it is disability “and” race/racism—and possibly also gender, sexuality, income level, and more. The CAS perspective’s embrace of intersectionality offers planners opportunities to gain insight into the complexity of disability experiences and to incorporate this insight into their planning work. For example, a CAS perspective could help the planner tasked with preparing a public consultation event to recognize that in order to welcome and engage disabled people, it is useful to consider disability experiences not in isolation, but with attention to how they intersect with, for example, experiences of gender, race/racism, age, and income level. The CAS perspective could help this planner to recognize and question normalized ableist elements within their personal understandings, biases, and actions, as well as their typical approach to carrying out public consultations. If this planner were to identify barriers and undertake accessibility actions for their consultation event that do not typically get accounted for in their organization’s usual practice, a CAS lens might help them to then question, “how is it the case that these barriers and accessibility actions typically get ignored when carrying out a public consultation event?” “How is this normal?” Asking such questions may open avenues for unsettling normalized, problematic planning practices and creating necessary organizational changes that could help to advance accessibility and inclusion.

Moving Forward

To work toward addressing normalized inattention to disability in planning, we urge planners to intentionally acknowledge the perspectives of disability they use and to embrace disability theory, intersectional thinking, and the complexity of disability experiences. They could begin by acknowledging and appreciating that disability is every bit as nuanced, relational, and varied as any other human experience. The beautiful complexity of disability requires that there cannot be a singular disability perspective that serves as a panacea for accounting for disability and ensuring accessibility and inclusion. Here, we have aimed to offer a way “in” for planners not occupying insider status. We are offering a starting point to begin understanding and working with disability and the problem of ableism in planning through engagement with disability theory. Planners could equip themselves to engage alternative perspectives, possibly in combination, to analyze specific disability-related matters at hand. For example, if tasked with correcting a site’s inaccessible design, a planner would likely want to think in terms of the social model to some degree, as it could help them to affix their focus on barriers organized into the site’s material conditions. At the same time, they could apply the CAS perspective and, in so doing, benefit from its attention to normalized ableist conceptions and practices that may have enabled the barriers to materialize in the site’s design. Other perspectives may of course support other beneficial analyses.

While this commentary largely focuses on planning practitioners, our urging to embrace the complexity of disability experiences by engaging different disability perspectives certainly extends to planning scholars and education. Planning scholars might ask, “where is disability in planning education?” We encourage planning scholars to question if and how they are engaging the topic of disability, both in their research and classrooms. Given the remarkably normalized exclusions facing some disabled people in planned environments, we should incorporate disability into planning courses and produce courses entirely focused on planning for and with disability in mind. Also, the intersectional relations between disability, ableism, and racism should be considered within our classrooms. Consideration should also be given to who will be asked to produce disability-focused education experiences and outcomes in planning. If we look, we may find a dramatic underrepresentation of scholars (and students) who identify as disabled in planning programs. Researching these considerations (and acting on findings!) could help to produce necessary and meaningful changes in planning education and, consequently, shape how future practitioners think about and act toward disability.

Embracing disability’s complexity is no small task in practice given the concurrent considerations a planner must give to policy contexts, competing rationales, stakeholder input, and existing material conditions. Power relations in government and private practice that support a simplified approach to disability for austerity or other neoliberal purposes can make this task even more difficult. ¹² Planners face challenges in planning accessible and inclusive communities but having a superficial understanding of disability should not be one of them. We prepared this commentary to help planners recognize the normalized inattention to disability in planning and to question how they think about and act toward disability. We also prepared it in hopes of helping planners to more fully understand the importance of their work to those not only requiring but deserving of accessible and inclusive environments. While planning has undoubtedly made some progress with respect to accounting for the rights of disabled people over the past thirty years, the persistence of normalized exclusionary designs and experiences suggests that we must double-down on efforts to unsettle status quo planning practice, policy, research, and education concerning accessibility and inclusion. Engaging disability theory in the planning field is one sensible way we can begin doing this. This action would equip planners to engage disability with greater forethought and, in so doing, help them to work toward stopping the production of exclusionary planned environments that treat disability as an afterthought.