Inclusiveness is as hot as is our climate nowadays. To the question ‘how can we develop inclusive cities?’ there are many approaches and many ideas. The built environment contains hidden assumptions that reveal how we think of people and their bodies.
In her thought-provoking book Sara Hendren reveals current thinking on inclusiveness confronts our heuristic minds placed over peoples and objects. She re-thinks development of public space from an inclusive mindset, based on stories of ‘disabled’ and their wanderings through the city. One of the key passages in her book is her observation on the condition which we call ‘disability’: ‘The condition of disability is present whenever a body finds itself in what scholar Rosemarie Garland-Thomson has called a pointed misfit relationship with the world – not the melodrama of a tragedy to overcome, not merely a “defect” of the flesh but a misfit: a disharmony that runs both ways, body to world and back.’ 

What are the implications for designing public space when we think of disability as a misfit? What would a counter at a store look like if it was developed with a blind person as most prominent user? Would it lead to new misfits with people that have both eyes working adequate? In case you like to reflect about these matters, don’t wait and order the book today!