In Brazil, with the 2010 Census, it is estimated that approximately 24% of the population have at least some degree of difficulty in relation to the skills questioned: walking, seeing, climbing steps and hearing, which represents almost 46 million people.
The human being has diversity in essence, and it is essential to respect individuality, without excluding the person from any socioeconomic participation, to guarantee access to public spaces, spaces for socializing, tourism, work, leisure and the like, through inclusive cities.
To understand what inclusive cities are and better understand the importance and relevance of this subject, follow the content below!
Inclusive cities: what does it mean?
In inclusive cities, there is an adequate and favorable physical environment for any and all cognitive abilities and functional conditions. This means that there must be ease of access, which guarantees full and quality social interaction for all people, without social and environmental barriers.
This concept encompasses people of all ages, including children with physical or intellectual disabilities or with temporary restrictions, elderly people with some type of reduced mobility or impairment of another ability.
This is relevant, because when cities are not designed for everyone's participation, a good portion of the population finds, in the limitation, a form of exclusion that directly impacts the quality of life, the chances of development, living with their peers and the exercise of human rights.
Therefore, an inclusive city has unrestricted access to all citizens in relation to public and private services, spaces and infrastructure, meeting the existing diversity in the needs of the population.
Inclusive cities and the 11th UN SDG
In the same reasoning presented, the United Nations (UN) created 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be implemented by all countries by 2030.
These goals were launched at the Sustainable Development Summit in 2015 and involve factors such as eradicating hunger, poverty and ensuring inclusive education.
The theme of the 11th SDG is that cities are sustainable and inclusive, whose concept of inclusion is the recognition that everyone has the right to participate in the creation of the urban environment and to benefit from the entire development of the city.
Therefore, the expected result is the promotion of broad access to all individuals in relation to opportunities, services and jobs. For this, during the process, all people must participate in the planning, together with specialists, so that diversity is represented.
After all, no one has more effective knowledge of the various existing needs than the people who make up the city's population and who are faced with physical and social barriers on a daily basis.
Universal design as a means of inclusion in cities
After understanding the concept and importance of inclusive cities, it is time to understand a little more about how they can be built, and universal design plays an important role in this.
In the 1980s, in the United States, architect Ron Mace developed the concept of universal design, which later had improvements and modifications over time.
This concept was created mainly due to the end of the 2nd World War, in which a large number of people were left with some type of disability resulting from the conflict.
This served as the basis for this design, so that architectural, urban and design projects would no longer use a scale model thought of as a pattern and include all people and their diversities.
Therefore, the universal design is designed without physical barriers and thought in a way that caters to people of all heights, weights, languages and diverse needs.
This means that, if a city is designed based on industrial design, it will be accessible and beneficial to everyone, whether they have a disability or not.
Inclusive cities for tourism
The concept can and should be widely seen, including in relation to tourist inclusion in cities, as they not only serve their citizens, but everyone who wants to visit.
In this sense, accessibility in tourism, through the principles of universal design, is also of paramount importance and should not divide tourists with some type of special need from others.
That is, inclusion, to be effective, cannot be segregated, adapting a part of the city or a certain area of a tourist spot or a square to the needs of a portion of the public, but rather, it needs to ensure that the entire environment receives all.
Ibirapuera park
A good example of everything covered in this content is the Intervention Plan, made by Plantar Ideias in Ibirapuera Park, in 2019. This plan has been approved by preservation bodies, so that the park is more accessible to all and has a universal inclusion, as well as other spaces should also have.
In this project, Plantar Ideias idealized the elimination of urban barriers, with solutions such as replacing guides with gutters, which eliminate urban steps. Other paving solutions are also included in the masterplan, improving access to collective spaces, giving all visitors the opportunity to access all equipment with accessible and safe routes autonomously.
In this project, the park's entire communication system was replaced by digital systems, which in the future may be integrated with artificial communication systems, further expanding accessibility and inclusion. Inclusion and accessibility are a broad topic of solutions and deserve a 360º look at any object of study and project.
It is important to highlight that currently there are laws in Brazil, in addition to the agreement with the UN, which ensure the inclusion of people with disabilities and ensure accessibility in public and private spaces and buildings, such as Law No. of Persons with Disabilities.
With this, new projects need to be developed ensuring inclusive access, and existing ones must be adequate, so that inclusive cities are possible.
Therefore, several interventions were indicated as necessary in Ibirapuera Park by the Plantar Ideias project to make this space more accessible to all audiences.
Can a smart city be inclusive?
Finally, it is worth highlighting how technology can help with inclusion. With technological advances, several areas can benefit, and inclusion is one of them.
Currently, cities are becoming smart to provide greater well-being to people through the use of technology to solve conflicts and demands, with constructive technologies, software and hardware that can act in urban spaces.
This intelligent urban architecture can and should also be inclusive from the point of view of human diversity. Many systems, devices and sensors can be used to facilitate free and independent access for people with visual and hearing needs, as well as many others, interconnecting the concept of smart city with that of inclusive city.
The installation of sound sensors and timers that announce when a visually impaired person can cross the street, for example, is a way of combining technology with inclusion. Another way is the installation of digital kiosks throughout the city with accessibility in terms of vision, hearing, mobility and height, allowing all people to obtain information about the city, routes, establishments, culture and much more.
Also, smart cities can be inclusive through artificial communication, as systems with Artificial Intelligence and a virtual assistant are able to have quality communication with the visually impaired, which can be applied in various services and urban points, including the kiosks mentioned above. .
Therefore, all areas of architecture and urbanism are focused on creating universal projects with inclusion and accessibility based on everything that technology can offer, with a focus on improving social well-being, in which inclusive cities are the future.
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