Constructing a New Approach to Radical Inclusion

Abstract

​​Spatial justice is an approach to social justice that takes into account the organization and utilization of geographical space and its impact on human life and social relations. Geographical location plays a key role in producing spatial injustice and exacerbating disadvantages. The social is spatial and vice versa, which is critical to understanding the experiences of marginalized individuals and communities. Despite progress in legislation, planning practitioners have not fully realized the enabling power of physical space and dominant models of disability continue to remain unjust. The organization of space and urban planning are crucial to promoting spatial justice, as studies have shown that a person’s ZIP code is a stronger predictor of health than any other factor. Public-private initiatives have often failed to consider the spatial dimension of justice in their designs and have neglected to address the exclusion of people with disabilities. The current social contract ignores the spatiality of injustice and a new social contract centered on space must be developed to reframe the problems and solutions to equity, access, and inclusion in human settlements.

When I say accessible, I don’t mean just for people with disabilities. Because when we work on the accessibility of public spaces, we also need to think about older persons. And the shopping carts and the strollers. And the mothers and fathers that take their children to school. It’s about having the ambition to build a city that is kind to everyone. And when I say everyone, I mean everyone. Without any kind of exclusion. (Joan Ramon Rivera, Advisor for Town Hall of Barcelona, President of the National Municipal Institute of People with Disabilities)

As I arrived at UC Berkeley on my first day of college, I was struck by the vibrant energy and diverse community that surrounded me. The campus was a melting pot of cultures, identities, and experiences, and I felt a sense of belonging and acceptance that I had never experienced before. I did not need to prove myself or fight twice as hard to be seen. I felt a sense of awe and reverence as I walked among the same hallowed halls as Martin Luther King, John F Kennedy, and role models who had come before me. These were also people like Judith Heumann¹ and Ed Roberts² who had paved the way for disability rights. I knew I would be part of a lineage of social change, of a new school of thought, and I felt a deep sense of gratitude and respect for the efforts of those that came before me.

As I explored the campus, I was awestruck by how accessible it was, the beauty and grandeur of the buildings and the towering redwood trees, the sweeping views of the Bay, the bustling streets and squares—it was all so alive, accessible, and full of possibility. I couldn’t help but feel a sense of awe and reverence as I took it all in. But as I walked, I still noticed some ways in which the campus fell short when it came to inclusion and belonging. The foundations of today’s urban questions are social and spatial justice, and I couldn’t help but wonder what it really meant for all people to feel included, rather than just be included on paper. I wondered what happens when inclusion efforts fail, or when municipal policies, programs, or services exclude segments of the population explicitly or implicitly.

I knew that my time at UC Berkeley would be a chance to explore these questions, to learn and grow, and to make a difference in the world. And as I settled into my new life on campus, I felt a sense of purpose and determination to do just that. Whether through my studies, my activism, or my daily interactions with my peers, I knew that I had the power to contribute to a more inclusive, just, and equitable society. I was filled with a sense of belonging and hope for the future. I hoped that I could help to shape and build the more inclusive and accessible future that I had imagined and knew needed to be created.

In order to understand how we can truly make cities become places of belonging for all, we first need to explore not only what it really means for all people to be included but rather to feel like they belong. Likewise, we must understand what happens when inclusion efforts fail, or when municipal policies, programs, or services exclude segments of the population explicitly or implicitly. The foundations of today’s urban question continue to be social and spatial justice. However, the precipice for urban transformation is not social or spatial justice, but rather pandemics, climate change, social cohesion, immigration flows, and an emerging transformation of the future of work, just to name a few. Each of these factors and forces require us to reimagine human dignity through a new social contract, one that must inherently also be spatial.

This chapter outlines the theoretical gaps in inclusive theories that have impeded true inclusion efforts, before considering what a new approach to radical inclusion would provide for cities and all the systems within them. It also further explores the role of disability justice theories as a lens for advancing radical inclusion.

The Need for Social and Spatial Justice

The term “spatial justice” was developed by radical geographers such as Lefebvre,³ Soja,⁴ and Harvey⁵ (Soja 2013; Lefebvre 1996; Harvey 1973). Each approaches the ideas of social justice with the organization and utilization of geographical space. To be sure, spatial justice theorists contend that space is an active force that impacts and deeply shapes human life and all ranges of human activities and social relations. Therefore, there is an inextricable relation between human beings and space, in that not only the space determines the social, but the social in turn builds the space, by constructing and reinforcing conceptions and norms of the space itself. It follows that social justice in order to be realized also requires the spatial dimension of justice to be taken into consideration. Spatial justice ultimately compels us to deal with the repercussions, in terms of burdens and benefits, that urban development entails.

Most notable are works of two friends and former teachers, the geographers David Harvey and Edward W. Soja who helped me understand and position human agency in a geographical frame. While listening to Edward W. Soja, I came to understand that spatial justice seeks to promote more progressive and participatory forms of democratic politics and social activism and provides new ideas on how to mobilize and maintain cohesive coalitions and regional confederations of grassroots and justice-oriented social movements. I came to understand that spatial justice is “a struggle over geography.”⁶

The organization of space is of fundamental importance to contemporary urban planning as studies show that a person’s ZIP code is a stronger predictor of his or her overall health⁷ than any other category or distinction including, race, gender, and age. Geographical location therefore appears to be a key element in producing spatial injustice, exacerbating disadvantages while also reinforcing privileges. I have witnessed this through my travels from Cuba to Yemen, Varanasi to Berkeley.

As stated above, the spatial is the social and it reflects and makes material social norms in a very physical and tangible manner. Think of bike shares and other micro mobility vehicles;^8,9 these services conceptualize micro mobility for a standard persona with capabilities that rarely deviate from an ideal, thus resulting in tools that further exacerbate the exclusion of people with disabilities and their ability to use the space on an equal basis with others.

In essence, the great majority of these public-private initiatives have done little to think through radical inclusion in the design or deployment of these services and have neglected the spatial dimension of justice (Fig. 3.1).

Fig. 3.1

Four micro mobility solutions featured in black and white, over a green aqua background. These are being piloted and deployed in various cities. Few micro mobility solutions or options are designed for people with disabilities and older persons. (Source: Victor Pineda)

Despite progress in legislation, planning practitioners have failed to fully realize the enabling power of physical space. Dominant models of disability, such as the medical abnormality and personal tragedy models are unjust and fail to address environmental inequity. The Independent Living Movement that began across several cities in the 1970s presented for the first time a socially and spatially just perspective of disability. This socio-spatial model was most clearly seen in the social and spatial justice campaigns of advocates living in Berkeley and featured in the Oscar-nominated feature documentary film Crip Camp. The way we imagine a social phenomenon or the models that we create to understand them have practical importance. The models or short-hand approaches we’ve built to understanding disability affect the way we build and construct the world around us. Thus, planning practitioners, researchers, and disability rights advocates will plan and create environments that can position access and equity at the center of a more developed relational and spatial model of justice.

Essentially, the way we relate to the physical environment is fundamentally constructed by the conceptions we have of “the other,” who is operating or acting within and between specified geographies. Spatial justice not only can change the way we interact with our environment but more importantly how we relate to one another. How we situate bodily differences, functional impairments, age, gender, race, class, migration status, and sexual orientation, also impacts our physical, mental, and emotional health. This inherent insight that the social is spatial and the spatial is social is critical to understanding the too often silenced and overlooked experiences of individuals and communities that live on the margins. Our social contract to a great extent ignores a conceptualization of the injustice of space or the spatiality of injustice. A new social contract must center space so that we can reframe both the problems and the solutions to equity, access, and inclusion in human settlements.

But before reviewing how radical inclusion can shed light on how we can reimagine our conceptions of the other, let us review where these conceptions come from in the first place.

Implicit Bias

One side effect of socialization is that it tends to establish implicit biases. These reinforce stereotypes and influence our perceptions, judgments, decisions, and actions. Implicit bias is unconscious. It may even be different from your conscious belief system. Because our conscious brain cannot interpret all the information that we see, our initial instincts commonly are not based on fully processed interpretations, leading to a reliance on biases of some type. Over time, our personal experiences, memories, and the influence of socialization produce unconscious biases that at a basic level result in rapid categorization of others as either “like me” or “not like me.” Implicit bias is therefore an automatic response in the brain in assigning a person to a group we have coded as “other.” This leads to having reduced levels of interest and empathy for that person and forms the basis of prejudice and discrimination.

The literature suggests there are overlapping neural systems that link fear with certain groups who are coded as “other.” At the neural level, the magnitude of implicit preferences for in-group and against out-group correlates with the activation of the amygdala.¹⁰ The amygdala is a subcortical structure of the brain, part of the limbic system or the emotional brain, that has a major role in the “fight-flight response,” and it becomes activated within a fraction of a second. The speed of this deeply embedded automatic response creates a response well before thoughts and actions based on the more reasoned part of the well-meaning person’s brain.

Studies have demonstrated that our responses differ markedly between when we see or hear stimuli from people we consider in-group or out-group. Functional MRI (fMRI) results show that when individuals see facial images of people from a different ethnic background to their own, it often activates the amygdala more than seeing people of the same ethnicity. The way we respond to different accents can also be explained by amygdala response to in-group and out-group memberships. While hearing someone speaking with a similar accent elicits an enhanced neural response, repetition of another group’s accent results in reduced neural responses.¹¹

Implicit biases about persons with disabilities are pervasive and can lead to discrimination due to unfair or prejudicial treatment of people and groups. Implicit biases also tend to create spurious categorizations. For example, policymakers are prone to vulnerability bias and to consistently assume, based on their biases, that persons with disabilities can all be grouped together.¹² As a result, persons with disabilities tend to be overly represented by wheelchair users while underrepresented by persons with psychosocial disabilities, mental illness, chronic pain, immunocompromised individuals, or persons with learning, intellectual or invisible disabilities.

Implicit biases develop over the course of a lifetime, beginning at an early age. Empirical studies show a dominant preference or bias toward non-disabled bodies, often eliciting sympathy and pity toward persons with disabilities or making the false assumption that they are unhappy or have a deep dissatisfaction with their life. To be sure, implicit biases cause us to see and judge people’s traits as being more or less desirable or judge them as being more or less valuable to society. In this sense, changing our notion of what is justice becomes an inescapable starting point to challenge the pervasive power of implicit biases.

Justice as Fairness

We need to revisit the way we plan cities because it is becoming clear that adhering to best practices helps cities become more resilient places. More importantly, we must ensure inclusivity is at the heart of how we manage cities. We need to create a greater level of livability and embed inclusivity to ensure that everyone has equal access to housing and public spaces. We need to put people before profit. (Maimunah Mohd Sharif Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN-Habitat)

Justice for people with disabilities is fundamentally a struggle for dignity, citizenship, and access. Under the dominant notions of justice, those who cannot produce value or who have impaired mental faculties are not understood to be full members of society. The capacity and capability of the so-called “weak” to exercise their rights, agency, and personhood still stands as a key litmus test in the definition of and struggle for justice.

Radical inclusion returns to the roots of justice, where scholars such as John Rawls in his A Theory of Justice¹³ and Justice as Fairness¹⁴ have put forward progressive ideas of justice centered around a fundamental belief that all people deserve to participate fully in every aspect of life. Rawls turned to the social contract tradition where justice is understood as the outcome of mutual advantage; i.e., that rules of justice are more beneficial for everyone than if each individual was to pursue their own advantage on their own. This presents several problematic areas for people living with disabilities. These areas fundamentally concentrate on the interaction between the individual and their environment.

One problem with contemporary theories of justice is that they are often based on “strong assumptions” that may introduce bias or exclude certain groups of people from the theory. For example, Martha Nussbaum and others argue that Rawls’s theory is unable to account for our duties of justice toward the severely disabled (Sen 1980; Kittay 1999; Nussbaum 2006; Kittay and Carlson 2010). Indeed, Rawls’s theory relies on a conception of justice that is based on the ability to participate in society, but this can exclude the severely disabled, who may not be able to participate in the same way as others, due to their cognitive or physical limitations. Consequently, people with disabilities may need additional resources and support to ensure their wellbeing and allow them to live with dignity. These critics challenge Rawls’ purposeful exclusion of the severely disabled “non-normal” individuals from analysis. They further point out problems with the ability to constitute personhood and the inability to extend justice and rights to those that cannot care for themselves or whose cognitive capacities limit the capacity of making conscious decisions and being in active control of life.

In the social/human rights model, people are disabled by attitudes and environments that discriminate against them. They may have impairments of various kinds such as sensory, language, learning, or mobility impairments, but how disabled or enabled they are is a result of how environments are designed and how society responds. For example, a person may be strongly myopic (short-sighted), which is a relatively minor but still significant visual impairment. Are they disabled? No, society has made it easy for them to adjust as their glasses are affordable and readily available. Were this not so, driving, watching television, catching a bus, going to the cinema, or even identifying people in the street would be a challenge. They would, to a degree, be disabled. So do they “have a disability”? No. In this way, disability can be seen to be relational, not intrinsic. It depends on how society responds to the impairment. The socio-spatial model also necessitates the active participation of those who have been historically marginalized and excluded in shaping the requisite transformations.

I argue that a complete transformation of the structures that cause exclusion is fundamental to the field of urban planning, policy, and design. Too often justice has been relegated to philosophical experiments or narrow interpretations of laws. Radical inclusion expands this limited approach by offering a contextual understanding of human capabilities, which are routinely deprived by environmental design. These strategies, when applied in cities, reposition urban planning as an enabling force for expanding human agency, individual choice, freedom, and ultimately justice.

What Is Radical Inclusion?

Radical inclusion is about transformation from the inside out, not modification from the outside in. It involves creating an environment where accessibility and flexibility are so deeply embedded that special accommodations are rarely, if ever, needed, where the able-bodied person is no longer the normative standard, but one of a variety of types, and where the disabled person is no longer a problem in need of a solution, but a person whose lived experience and expertise open new ways of seeing and being for others. (Ele Chenier, Professor in the Department of History and Associate Professor in the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, Simon Fraser University)

Simple inclusion leaves the structures responsible for the inequality and exclusion we see in the world today intact. Radical inclusion calls for a transformation of the structure itself. It is also useful to consider that the term radical comes from the Latin “radicalis,” meaning “root.” Therefore the term should not have connotations of extremes or simply the rejection of neoliberalism, but rather is focused on getting to the root of an issue or problem so that barriers are removed, people can express themselves fully, and their uniqueness be allowed to shine through. Radical inclusion means seeing everyone as equal, tackling the roots of inequality, and eliminating barriers to unlock human potential for all.

Radical inclusion is not about inserting persons with disabilities into existing structures, but about transforming systems to be inclusive of everyone. Inclusive communities put into place measures to support all people with disabilities or older persons at home, school, vocational centers, sports, cultural events, and in their communities. When barriers exist, inclusive communities transform the way they are organized to meet the needs of all people. Barriers create obstacles for individuals by denying or diminishing their choices. They may also deny or diminish fundamental human rights, such as political and public participation, employment, or education. Left unchecked, barriers perpetuate exclusion, isolation, disempowerment, poverty, and inequality.

The term “radical inclusion” has gained wider cultural awareness partially due to its inclusion as one of the Ten Principles of Burning Man. The principles were developed in 2004 by the festival co-founder Larry Harvey as a reflection of the community’s ethos and culture as it had organically developed since the event’s inception in the 1980s. Burning Man is a temporary city, constructed for one week each year (and subsequently deconstructed), located in the middle of the Black Rock Desert in Nevada with a population capped at 70,000 paying participants. It has forged a permanent community of people dedicated to celebrating creativity, self-expression, cultural differences, knowledge sharing, and releasing social stigma.¹⁵ As it relates to Burning Man, radical inclusion states that anyone may be a part of the event and that no prerequisites exist for participation in the Burning Man community.

Radical inclusion is both a process and a goal to create the cities of tomorrow. When we consider how to achieve radical inclusion in our cities, if radical inclusion is the transformation of structures that caused exclusion, radically inclusive cities require a transformation of the systems in cities that promoted exclusion. For cities this means policies that encourage radical inclusion as well as targeted Universal Design that achieve it. There is a need for a new approach because of the context of the environments, trends, and issues that we as a global community are currently facing. This includes rapid urbanization and technological transformation of all parts of society, as well as the health, social, and economic upheaval caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. But how can disability justice theories and concepts of radical inclusion be advanced without a militant overthrow of the existing systems that are working? By building the world we want without destroying the one we already have.

Disability Justice as a Lens for Advancing Radical Inclusion

I have chosen to purposefully provide a broad notion of disability justice, one that is inclusive of a broader framework of disability rights, but at the same time expands it and makes it more relevant to our time. As a result, there could be other more narrow approaches, but here are five definitions that can help elucidate what disability justice is and how the term is applied in this book:

• 1. Disability justice is the recognition and promotion of the rights of people with disabilities to participate fully in society, and the dismantling of the barriers and discrimination that prevent them from doing so.

• 2. Disability justice is a movement that seeks to create a world where people with disabilities are not only included, but also valued, respected, and celebrated for their unique perspectives and contributions.

• 3. Disability justice is an intersectional approach to addressing the complex interplay of ableism, racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of oppression experienced by people with disabilities, and working toward a more inclusive and equitable society.

• 4. Disability justice is the application of the principles of social justice to the rights and experiences of people with disabilities, with a focus on addressing the root causes of discrimination and inequality, and empowering individuals to live their lives to the fullest.

• 5. Disability justice is the recognition that disability is not a personal tragedy or individual deficit, but a natural part of the human experience that should be embraced and supported, rather than stigmatized and marginalized.

Each of the above definitions expands and builds on the evolving notion of disability as noted in the preamble of the UNCRPD. Disability justice thus has a relative salience that is contextualized within every city’s particular norms, values,¹⁶ and changing expectations. Further, the relative position of the notion should be explored in relation to the city’s capability to respond to emerging issues and themes.

The disability justice movement builds upon the work of the disability rights movement, which has fought for decades to secure rights for disabled people and recognize their social position.¹⁷ By taking a more context-specific approach, we can better understand how disabled people in different cities and communities have secured their rights and how their experiences are shaped by other forms of marginalization. The disability rights movement has laid the groundwork for the emergence of a disability justice movement, a newer movement that centered the struggle of doubly marginalized by intersectional identities. Thus newer notions of disability justice are able to create the legal, political, cultural, and social preconditions for more culturally specific and holistic policy responses.

In order to go beyond the full participation of people with disabilities, that is to say their radical inclusion, it becomes indispensable to ensure that disability justice becomes part of institutional structures and is mature and ingrained in social norms. In turn, disability justice advocates for the removal of all forms of oppression thus revolving around all disabled people including “disabled people of color, immigrants with disabilities, queers with disabilities, trans and gender non-conforming people with disabilities, people with disabilities who are houseless, people with disabilities who are incarcerated, and people with disabilities who have had their ancestral lands stolen, amongst others.”¹⁸

Defining Radical Inclusion as a Framework for Urban Transformation

Radical inclusion is a framework that goes beyond simply promoting full participation and seeks to fundamentally transform systems in order to eliminate the agency deprivations that prevent individuals and communities from achieving their full potential. This approach recognizes that individuals and communities may be excluded or marginalized for a variety of reasons, including disability, race, gender, sexuality, and other forms of identity. Radical inclusion seeks to address these issues at their root, by creating inclusive systems that allow individuals and communities to exercise agency and make their own choices about how to live their lives. This approach recognizes that inclusive systems are essential for building more resilient and equitable societies and for unleashing the potential of all individuals and communities.

Disability justice implies the removal of all barriers as a concrete strategy to advancing radical inclusion. These can be in the form of physical, attitudinal, legal, regulatory, or policy barriers and can also simply be a lack of information being available in accessible formats. No matter what form they take, these barriers prevent people from being able to fully and “radically” participate. Promoting equality of opportunities and access to services and information for persons with disabilities is also critical to strategies for reducing poverty and the effective realization of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the shared objectives of the international community.

Disability justice is also one of the most powerful tools available in helping to advance spatial justice (Soja 1990; Harvey 2001). Because space is socially produced, it can therefore also be socially changed. The spatial shapes the social as much as the social shapes the spatial and spatial justice or injustice can be seen as both an outcome and a process.¹⁹ There is no spatial justice without disability justice. Applying a disability lens to urban planning through historic eras creates an innovative multidisciplinary framework for understanding social and physical exclusion over time.

Distribution of space is an important aspect of realizing justice for disabled persons. It is only just if it is to the advantage of the least well-off stakeholder. Where environmental elements—and space itself—are conceived for the most part as fixed, immobile, and inflexible, planners may not see how their actions exercise a normalizing vision of physical ability that is socially constructed. Out of this notion a larger set of theories can be criticized and a new broader theory of justice can be formulated. If, however, disability is continuously held as a property of an individual independent of an environment, just theories of disability can never emerge.

The philosophies of the independent living movement and their political struggles have uncovered new truths about space and the inequity of its distribution but have not achieved the full potential possible with a spatial lens. Justice and democracy itself are at risk if spatial exclusion persists. Let the lessons learned and the struggles fought inform us and help us shape an open and more perfect union not just for people with disabilities but for everyone. My contribution is building on the literature by bringing into focus the enabling and disabling role of the environment and presenting disability justice as a tool to understand human agency more broadly, ultimately leading to the unlocking of capabilities through better design.

How Equity Relates to Justice

PolicyLink defines equity as “just and fair inclusion into a society in which all can participate, prosper, and reach their full potential. Unlocking the promise of the nation by unleashing the promise in us all.”²⁰ Inclusiveness is a vital component of the digital transformation required to create more equitable and just cities. But equitable cities are about more than just providing access to new technologies, they extend right back to the basic planning and design decisions that occur throughout the development and expansion of cities.

Equity within cities forms part of the greater challenge to create social justice, by expanding opportunities for all persons, especially for persons with disabilities, older persons, or those who are adversely affected by policies that cause racial or economic exclusion. It is the responsibility of governments, institutions, decision makers, and city leaders to seek to reduce inequity by prioritizing the needs of those people in society who are routinely excluded from accessing urban environments or services within their cities.

Equity moves beyond notions of equality to incorporate policies that respond to difference. This has the effect of driving decision-making toward equitable policies that actively seek to reduce harm or exclusion of certain members of society. Equity is also intersectional in that there are a large number of overlaps between the pursuit of equitable cities and social justice and issues that affect community engagement and environmental issues.

Targeted Universalism as a Policy Tool for Radical Inclusion

Planning scholars and practitioners are powerful allies in promoting, protecting, and ensuring that persons with disabilities can exercise their rights and participate equally in city life. They play a key role in not only altering the built environment (i.e., removing unnecessary barriers) but also actively promoting the participation of persons with disabilities as a targeted underrepresented group.

Let us assume for simplicity that there are ten constraints reducing opportunities for group A, and two of those constraints are reducing opportunities for group B. If fifty percent of group A is constrained by 1 and 2 and only ten percent of group B is constrained by 1 and 2, we might assume that since A is disproportionately constrained by 1 and 2, group A would disproportionately benefit from the removal of 1 and 2.

Suppose that the presence of any of the constraints is sufficient to deny opportunity. A universal policy that removed constraints 1 and 2 would vastly increase the opportunity movement of group B. It would not, however, change the conditions of group A because there are still eight remaining constraints reducing opportunity for that group. Yet the failure of group A to translate the policy into opportunity might be seen as a failure on the part of group A, and not a failure of policy.

What this false universalism fails to address is that groups of people are differently situated in relation to institutional and policy dynamics. If one only looks at one or two constraints, one is likely to inaccurately assume that groups who are in very different circumstances are in fact similar. The flaw in this false universalism is not overcome by anti-discrimination policies. One could argue that the disfavored group is not being discriminated against in a traditional sense. Instead, their situatedness is causing the disadvantage. It is important and appropriate to remove the institutional and situational constraints of group A. This is the universal part of the effort. But it is equally important to remove the additional constraints that are experienced by group B. This is the targeted part of the effort. Failure to do so in issues related to race will not only reproduce racialized disparities, it will also continue to support divisive racialized meaning and discourse.

The New Reality

The future is accessible and radically diverse. This future is within reach. We are imagineers for the future we want to build, and there are new ideas and technologies emerging that are producing solutions that result in faster, better, and cheaper outcomes. The way we perceive the problem—is the problem. A problem is an invitation to reimagine, innovate, and lead the way to radical inclusion. Together we are catalysts to a more accessible and inclusive future.

Cities define urban life as the collection of places where social groups interact with or ignore one another; where order and resistance meet. Urban planning must be repositioned as an enabling force for expanding human agency, individual choice, and freedom. New models can be created and lives changed by lowering barriers to participation, redressing social exclusion, and empowering individuals to be active in civic life. These models and changes are not uniform, there will be variations from city to city, state to state, and country to country.

Every human life has value, but during that life most people will also encounter many obstacles. At the same time, every human life has limitless potential. Every place or every person is endowed with possibilities and particularities that make that place or person unique. The challenge is to understand the real barriers and remove them at their root so that physical and human potential can be unlocked. The future is urban, with cities that are accessible and radically diverse. The future is within reach.

Emerging Approaches to Radical Inclusion in Practice

What is the extent to which radical inclusion is an inescapable imperative for cities? How do we better understand and evaluate governance within cities? In previous sections we explored how radical inclusion can advance governance and how crucial it is to transforming our current institutions. The following sections help us create performance criteria for advancing resilient and responsive systems of the future. The creation of radically inclusive practices offers functional and emotional benefits to city and team leaders, policymakers, and other urban stakeholders looking to implement measures to improve the accessibility and resilience of their cities.

When implemented correctly radical inclusion can:

• 1. Eliminate individual and group agency deprivations

  • (a) Unlock human potential and enhance individual agency through more holistic policies and broad based governance

  • (b) Collectively empower marginalized groups, to foster more socially resilient and cohesive societies

  • (c) Create accountability mechanisms to lower discrimination and social friction through an integrated, evidence based, capability enhancing approach to urban policy

• 2. Inspire individuals and organizations to achieve new goals

  • (a) Help foster growth in under-appreciated resources such as human capital, social capital, knowledge capital, and a new unaccounted resource—inspirational capital

  • (b) New forms of capital accumulation can generate greater wealth and social wellbeing

  • (c) Explicit and continuous learning, capacity building, and empowerment

  • (d) Measure productivity and creativity in the workplace and community at large

  • (e) Belief and pride that cities can work better for everyone

  • (f) Demonstrate through effective benchmarking that diversity, equity, access, and inclusion are demonstrably creating a world that’s better for all of us

  • (g) Help create tangible, validated, and proven tools to unlock underutilized resources and drive investments for an inclusive transformation agenda

• 3. Data, monitoring, and evaluation criteria drive impact

  • (a) Integrated measures drive progress on ESG and capital accounting

  • (b) Increase confidence from the fact that these goals are measurable, stakeholders are accountable to paving the way toward common goals, and are committed to building a radically inclusive future

  • (c) New data, monitoring and evaluation criteria can create a roadmap toward an inclusive future

In conclusion, the adoption of emerging approaches to radical inclusion in urban planning can have a transformative impact on marginalized communities. By eliminating agency deprivations and promoting social cohesion, cities can empower these groups and unlock their potential, leading to increased productivity and creativity in the workplace, as well as lower discrimination and social friction. By demonstrating the tangible benefits of diversity, equity, access, and inclusion, cities can also inspire individuals and organizations to achieve new goals and create more inclusive and resilient societies. The next chapters will offer more insights into how these approaches are applied and elaborate on implications for their greater adoption.

Callout Box—News Article

• The importance of ensuring inclusive and accessible public spaces

• Source: Open Access Government

Consider This

What some social commentators call “social cleansing still does go on,” acknowledged a local government planner. Neighbors describe the eviction of a homeless person from public spaces in his London borough as heartless. While accessible public spaces have always been limited by rules, the regulations that set out who can enter and what is permitted within are frequently challenged. As public spaces are used in a variety of ways, governments and organizations responsible for managing them respond by rewriting the terms of access to those spaces through new laws and regulations. In this way, the rules of access to public space are essentially mediated by organizations with more power and then tested, questioned, or contested by those with less.

These types of issues are important because the accessibility and inclusivity of public spaces is an important aspect of a city’s culture and democracy. Public spaces play a crucial role in fostering a sense of community and enabling people to participate in the social and political life of the city. It is therefore important to ensure that public spaces are designed, managed, and regulated in a way that promotes accessibility and inclusivity for all members of the community.

There are also implications related to the privatization of public spaces, where accessibility issues arise if private entities are responsible for managing and maintaining the space. In these cases, there is a heightened risk that the private owners or land managers may prioritize their own interests and agendas over the needs of the broader public. This can result in exclusionary practices, such as the eviction of homeless people or the displacement of persons with disabilities, for example by making it harder for people with mobility limitations to access certain areas.