Victor Santiago Pineda

Over the next 32 years, cities will shape virtually every aspect of global development, including the manner in which rights to housing, health, and education are won or wasted, implemented or ignored (Marcuse and Van Kempen, 2011; Sassen, 2011). The urban century can transform the productive capacity and outcomes of the estimated 400-600 million urban citizens who live with disabilities. This number is set to increase dramatically by 2050 when 66% of the global population will be living in cities (Acuto, 2013; Alger, 2013). Of the projected increase of 2.5 billion urban dwellers,[1] 15-20% are expected to be persons with disabilities.[2] Well-planned cities have dramatically improved the social and economic outcomes for individuals with a range of disabilities, their families, and the larger communities they participate in.  Well-planned cities take into consideration the widest range of needs and incorporate design standards that assume that a significant portion of the population may have difficulty seeing, hearing, or moving around without assistance.

A growing body of research now shows that the most pressing issue faced by millions of persons with disabilities worldwide is not their disability but rather social exclusion (Abendroth et al., 2015; Ahmmad et al., 2014; Al Qadi et al., 2012; Amedeo and Speicher, 1995; Anguelovski, 2013; Bezmez, 2013). Poor planning, and unregulated urban development can have devastating consequences for persons with disabilities. According to the United Nations CRPD Committee, “Without access to the physical environment, to transportation… and to other facilities and services open or provided to the public, persons with disabilities would not have equal opportunities for participation in their respective societies.”[3] The committee also states that “Accessibility is a precondition for persons with disabilities to live independently and participate fully and equally in society.”[4]

Gender, ethnicity, and poverty, compound existing exclusions for persons with disabilities, limiting their access to opportunities.

Over the next 32 years, cities will shape virtually every aspect of global development, including the manner in which rights to housing, health, and education are won or wasted, implemented or ignored (Marcuse and Van Kempen, 2011; Sassen, 2011). The urban century can transform the productive capacity and outcomes of the estimated 400-600 million urban citizens who live with disabilities. This number is set to increase dramatically by 2050 when 66% of the global population will be living in cities (Acuto, 2013; Alger, 2013). Of the projected increase of 2.5 billion urban dwellers,[1] 15-20% are expected to be persons with disabilities.[2] Well-planned cities have dramatically improved the social and economic outcomes for individuals with a range of disabilities, their families, and the larger communities they participate in.  Well-planned cities take into consideration the widest range of needs and incorporate design standards that assume that a significant portion of the population may have difficulty seeing, hearing, or moving around without assistance.

A growing body of research now shows that the most pressing issue faced by millions of persons with disabilities worldwide is not their disability but rather social exclusion (Abendroth et al., 2015; Ahmmad et al., 2014; Al Qadi et al., 2012; Amedeo and Speicher, 1995; Anguelovski, 2013; Bezmez, 2013). Poor planning, and unregulated urban development can have devastating consequences for persons with disabilities. According to the United Nations CRPD Committee, “Without access to the physical environment, to transportation… and to other facilities and services open or provided to the public, persons with disabilities would not have equal opportunities for participation in their respective societies.”[3] The committee also states that “Accessibility is a precondition for persons with disabilities to live independently and participate fully and equally in society.”[4]

Gender, ethnicity, and poverty, compound existing exclusions for persons with disabilities, limiting their access to opportunities.

Persons with disabilities (PWDs) living in cities during the COVID-19 pandemic response may be four times more likely to be injured or die than non-disabled persons, not because of their "vulnerable" position but because urban health policy, planning and practice has not considered their needs.  In this article, the adverse health impacts on PWDs during the COVID-19 pandemic reveals the “everyday emergen- cies” in cities for PWDs and that these can be avoided through more inclusive community planning, a whole- of-government commitment to equal access, and imple- mentation of universal design strategies. Importantly, COVID-19 can place PWDs at a higher risk of infection since some may already have compromised immune and respiratory systems and policy responses, such as social distancing, can lead to life-threatening disruptions in care for those that rely on home heath or personal assistants. Living in cities may already present health- damaging challenges for PWDs, such as through lack of access to services and employment, physical barriers on streets and transportation, and smart-city technologies that are not made universally accessible. We suggest that the current pandemic be viewed as an opportunity for significant urban health reforms on the scale of the sanitary and governance reforms that followed ninetieth century urban epidemics. This perspective offers in- sights for ensuring the twenty-first century response to COVID-19 focuses on promoting more inclusive and healthy cities for all.

Dominant models of disability, such as the medical abnormality and personal tragedy models are unjust and fail to address the enabling and disabling role of the environment. The Independent Living Movement of the 1970s offered a socially and spatially just perspective of disability, but the gains of this struggle have brought mixed results. Despite progress in legislation, planning practitioners have failed to fully realize the enabling power of physical space. This paper presents disability rights advocates, researchers, and practicing planners an argument for using space as a dimension along which justice for people with disabilities can be realized.

I dream of a city where all kinds of people from all walks of life come together to live peacefully and harmoniously together. Where men, women, children, old, young, walking or not can be free to roam around the city without any hurdles nor inconvenience. A community where everyone doesn't look down at another person but treats them equally. Too big of a dream? I think not.

Since its conception almost seventy years ago, Venezuelan democracy continually rested on two ideological pillars; the Social Democratic Accion Democratica (AD) and the Christian Democratic Comitee de Organization Politica Electoral Independiente (COPEI). The dominance of these political parties during the Venezuelan prosperity in the 60's and 70's became symbiotic pillars of steel, virtually unbreakable. In the 80's and 90's, public dissatisfaction with government mismanagement, corruption, the falling price of oil, and economic stagnation rusted the pillars that crumbled under the weight of Hugo Chavez's Bolivarian Revolution.
The decline of the AD-COPEI bipartisan establishment punctured Venezuela's political equilibrium, reconfiguring, realigning and redefining a new development trajectory.  Opponents have said Chavez has corrupted institutions and dismantled "the longest standing democracy in Latin America." While proponents see it as a progressive laboratory for new forms of democracy, with progressive social and radical economic policies being tested and employed.  In the context of popular dissatisfaction with a corrupt, irresponsive and aged political structure, Chavez has without argument come to embody the punctuated equilibrium  reshaping Venezuela’s historic power structures.  This paper seeks to lay out the antecedent conditions that represent the “base line” legacy of the agreement of Punto Fijo and the birth of Venezuelan democracy.  It outlines the political structure and ideologies during AD and COPEI, their growth and dominance, and then lays out their rise and decline.  A formative analysis of influential factors will help understand a locked-in AD-COPEI  establishment. This will help answer the basic questions: What were the challenges of the 8O’s, and how did lack of governability and institutional demise evolve? What forces helped open the political arena for non-party politicos to participate and win overwhelming support?  It will not address Chavez’s “V Republica,” since it is not a paper on current critical junctures in Venezuela.

This essay examines how the application of planning thinking within the CED contributed to both the development of the new national conception of disability and a transformation in the way planning addresses disability. This essay is comprised of four sections. The first section presents the early history of U.S. disability planning both, in practice and in the literature.  The second section presents the role of the University of California, Berkeley and particularly its College of Environmental Design in altering those conceptions.  The third section briefly traces how those new conceptions have affected disability policy and planning far beyond the boundaries of Berkeley.  The fourth and final section concludes and makes suggestions for further research.

The factors that impede adolescent agency

The facts, incidences, and significance of differential outcomes among adolescents with and without disabilities; 

Assess the factors that perpetuate inequity within a wider context of adolescence.

Three transformative cases that strengthen adolescent agency

Explore what an agency enhancing policy framework looks like

Explore differential outcomes through inequity and discriminatory practices

This Open Access book is an anthropological urban study of the Emirate of Dubai, its institutions, and their evolution. It provides a contemporary history of disability in city planning from a non-Western perspective and explores the cultural context for its positioning. Three insights inform the author’s approach. First, disability research, much like other urban or social issues, must be situated in a particular place. Second, access and inclusion forms a key part of both local and global planning issues. Third, a 21st century planning education should take access and inclusion into consideration by applying a disability lens to the empirical, methodological, and theoretical advances of the field. By bridging theory and practice, this book provides new insights on inclusive city planning and comparative urban theory. This book should be read as part of a larger struggle to define and assert access; it’s a story of how equity and justice are central themes in building the cities of the future and of today.