How African Cities Are Failing People with Disabilities (And What Architects Can Do About It)
This article was originally published by Common Edge as "Africa?s Undeclared War on the Disabled."
A paraplegic man, entering the Nigerian House of Representatives, is forced to crawl down the steps. Image <a href='https://twitter.com/SaharaReporters/status/938102600817348609'>via Sahara Reporters on Twitter</a>
This article was originally published by Common Edge as "Africa?s Undeclared War on the Disabled."Recently I spent part of a week in the company of a multidisciplinary group of academics and researchers from Europe, the US, and Africa, at a workshop entitled ?The Practice and Politics of DIY Urbanism in Africa.? Jonathan Makuwira, a professor from the Malawi University of Technology, delivered a compelling paper on ?Disability and Urbanism in Malawi,? highlighting the many challenges of the continent?s disabled population, using that city as a case study.The lecture reaffirmed my sentiments on the gross inadequacies of urban public spaces for the disabled. It?s an issue that formed the basis for my 2016 entry for the Richard Rogers Fellowship at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), where I had proposed to use the fellowship to develop a prescriptive accessible design blueprint for public spaces in the city of Abuja. Considering the events that also took place that same week, Makuwira?s talk couldn?t have been more timely. The workshop curator, Steve Marr, a political science PhD and senior lecturer at the...
A paraplegic man, entering the Nigerian House of Representatives, is forced to crawl down the steps. Image <a href='https://twitter.com/SaharaReporters/status/938102600817348609'>via Sahara Reporters on Twitter</a>
This article was originally published by Common Edge as "Africa?s Undeclared War on the Disabled."Recently I spent part of a week in the company of a multidisciplinary group of academics and researchers from Europe, the US, and Africa, at a workshop entitled ?The Practice and Politics of DIY Urbanism in Africa.? Jonathan Makuwira, a professor from the Malawi University of Technology, delivered a compelling paper on ?Disability and Urbanism in Malawi,? highlighting the many challenges of the continent?s disabled population, using that city as a case study.The lecture reaffirmed my sentiments on the gross inadequacies of urban public spaces for the disabled. It?s an issue that formed the basis for my 2016 entry for the Richard Rogers Fellowship at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), where I had proposed to use the fellowship to develop a prescriptive accessible design blueprint for public spaces in the city of Abuja. Considering the events that also took place that same week, Makuwira?s talk couldn?t have been more timely. The workshop curator, Steve Marr, a political science PhD and senior lecturer at the...
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