In The Architecture of Disability: Buildings, Cities, and Landscapes beyond Access, David Gissen contends that the focus on access in design around disability perpetuates inequalities, arguing instead for centralising disabled people in architectural and urban planning. Amy Batley finds that the book’s attempts to reframe disability in contemporary urban landscapes are overpowered by historical tangents and subjective claims.

The Architecture of Disability: Buildings, Cities, and Landscapes beyond Access. David Gissen. University of Minnesota Press. 2022.

While the gendered and racialised inequalities of urban design have become prominent avenues of academic debate, the limited consideration of the needs of disabled people within planning for the public sphere continues to undermine calls for more egalitarian urban design. In The Architecture of Disability, David Gissen pursues this matter, arguing that the overwhelming focus on access when designing cities continues to perpetuate inequalities for people with disabilities in using urban spaces, landscapes and buildings. For Gissen, the architectural emphasis on access is insufficient. In response to this, he calls for a more critical understanding of how disability is experienced in the urban realm, and for those with disabilities to be centralised in architectural and urban design, rather than exteriorised.

For Gissen, the existing architectural emphasis on creating urban spaces which are accessible for those with disabilities is “an incomplete response” which serves to “reinforce entrenched definitions of disability” (ix) by “view[ing] impairments as physical and mental aberrations and burdens to overcome” (xv). Rather than interpreting disability as an aberration for which compensations need to be made, Gissen calls for the creation of an architecture which coexists with disability.

Rather than interpreting disability as an aberration for which compensations need to be made, Gissen calls for the creation of an architecture which coexists with disability.

Gissen’s historical analysis is extensive and detailed, centralising historical examples of urban engagement with disability within the text. The author draws parallels between seemingly disparate historical examples, such as Athens’ Acropolis and Saint Denis’ Basilica, to argue that, in their current form, any reference to historical disability assistance at these two monuments has been minimised. For example, Gissen cites archaeological research which showed that, in Ancient Greece, the Acropolis featured ramps and the area was used by the elderly using canes and crutches. Gissen uses this second-hand historical context to claim that in the case of this monument, the space “might have been more relatable to its impaired visitors in the past than it is in its present-day condition” (9). This historical analysis is similarly strong in a later chapter, where Gissen’s discussion of 19th-century urbanism in Paris presents a refreshing read beyond the dominant urbanist tendency to blame many of contemporary Paris’ successes and ills on Baron Haussmann’s overhaul of the city’ urban planning.

Gissen cites archaeological research which showed that, in Ancient Greece, the Acropolis featured ramps and the area was used by the elderly using canes and crutches

Gissen also provides an additional new perspective from which to consider monumentality beyond existing urban analyses of their political manipulation for nation-building purposes. The author argues that present-day efforts to preserve the historic reference to the vulnerabilities of previous users at monumental sites exposes how contemporary monument management has “sublimated weakness and vulnerability as cultural values” (11) towards an idealised vision of the nation.

Though providing the reader with new perspectives from which to consider the role of disability in contemporary urban landscapes, the book’s central premise – of moving the consideration of disability in the city beyond questions of access – frequently becomes lost amid historical tangents whose relevance to the argument is not always made explicit. For example, Gissen continues his critique of monumentality in contemporary cities, but rather than tying the matter of monumentality to disability, Gissen loses focus and begins to question the role of Confederate and colonial monuments in the context of Black Lives Matter protests. The calls from those protestors deserve thorough consideration and academic debate, but the relevance to a discussion about the architecture of disability is not clarified. This reflects a broader structural problem with the book. Though the architectural and urban connections are intermittently addressed throughout the chapters, these relationships are not always clear, which leaves the reader to try to connect the dots.

Though the architectural and urban connections are intermittently addressed throughout the chapters, these relationships are not always clear, which leaves the reader to try to connect the dots.

Several of the book’s claims will likely frustrate fellow urbanists. This largely stems from the minimal referencing and portrayal of subjective statements as objective facts. For example, in discussing how the rationalisation of European and American cities has made them “some of the most inaccessible places” (53), Gissen takes issue with how the apparent “immensity and exposed quality of the boulevard make walking intimidating” (ibid.). Here, Giddens’ lack of reference to Haussmann’s renovations of Paris, which had been undertaken to enable better vision and military access to quash revolutionary fervour in the 18th-century city, seems to deliberately obfuscate a widely accepted understanding among urbanists. Gidden’s claim that boulevards are intimidating directly contradicts the general urban consensus that, in the right conditions, the surveillance – so-called “eyes on the street”– enabled by urban exposure can create feelings of security and, thus, implies a poor engagement with broader urban theory. Moreover, this argument that open urban spaces can intimidate and deter users is presented at a time when the architectural opening of urban spaces for security purposes has become preferable to hard-engineering measures and the militarisation of urban landscapes, which suggests that the author is choosing not to engage with some of the emerging urban challenges to which his thesis relates.

The book’s aspirations are admirable, presenting a much-needed consideration of the role of disability in contemporary cities. Unfortunately, the book’s historical tangents obscure its central argument while also revealing the author’s nostalgic vision for an urban life more reminiscent of Ancient Greece than one which can engage with the myriad of contemporary challenges faced by disabled people moving through and making lives in cities.

Note: This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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