One Way to a Better City: Ask Disabled People to Design It

A daily mix of stories about cities, city life, and our always evolving neighborhoods and skylines. [Curbed]( FRIDAY, JANUARY 20 street view [One Way to a Better City: Ask Disabled People to Design It]( Wouldn’t everyone fare a little better if (to take just one example) airport luggage-screening counters were lower? Photo: AfriPics.com/Alamy Stock Photo What would it be like to live in a city designed by, or at least with, the disabled? For starters, that metropolis’s main public library and its most august museum would not sit atop monumental staircases. The designer, historian, and Parsons professor David Gissen opens his book The Architecture of Disability with a description of the day in 1990 when dozens of protesters jettisoned crutches and wheelchairs and hauled themselves up the U.S. Capitol steps on their stomachs or backs. The Capitol Crawl, he points out, was about more than access: It dramatized just how alienated disabled people feel from monuments that are meant to embody a democratic idea. Gissen imagines an urban environment that would do more than grudgingly accommodate people who can’t see or walk or hear or who have cognitive impairments. Rather than treat disability as a separate category of sufferers with special needs, he yearns for a city that would recognize, and take its shape from, the vast variety of physical experience. [Continue reading »]( Want more on city life, real estate, and design? [Subscribe now]( for unlimited access to Curbed and everything New York. [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( The Latest [If You’re So Good at Real Estate, Stephen Ross … Three years and a 50 percent price cut later, the Hudson Yards developer finally sold his penthouse.]( By Adriane Quinlan [A $400,000 Studio With a Working Marble Fountain It’s the former reception room of a home once occupied by Ulysses S. Grant’s widow.]( By Adriane Quinlan [A Queens Co-op Full of Electricians It remains basically as it was imagined in 1949: a surprisingly affordable city within a city.]( By Kayla Levy [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( [Read More From Curbed]( If you enjoyed reading Curbed’s daily newsletter, forward it to a friend. Or [sign up for our Design Hunting newsletter]( for a visual diary from design editor Wendy Goodman. [logo]( [facebook logo]( [instagram logo]( [twitter logo]( [unsubscribe](param=curbed) | [privacy notice]( | [update preferences]( This email was sent to {EMAIL}. Was this email forwarded to you? [Sign up now]( to get this newsletter in your inbox. [View this email in your browser.]( You received this email because you have a subscription to New York. Reach the right online audience with us For advertising information on email newsletters, please contact AdOps@nymag.com Vox Media, LLC 1201 Connecticut Ave. NW, 12th Floor Washington, DC 20036 Copyright © 2023, All rights reserved