The makings of disability-inclusive sustainable communities: Perspectives from Australia

Abstract

The right to inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable suburbs is an aim of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11, with a particular focus on addressing race, disability, class, gender and age inequality and injustice by the year 2030. Despite supranational interest in creating inclusive sustainable cities and communities, we still know little about what this means for disabled people¹. In this article, we address this gap ––through participatory qualitative research study – Planning Inclusive Communities, involving 97 people (9-92 years of age) of which over 50% identified as disabled people from two Australian regions - Tasmania and Queensland. The research revealed five core interrelated elements - “The Makings of Inclusive Communities” .These five elements reinforce the importance of interconnected social, economic, and built environment structures and systems in facilitating inclusion, and that inclusion happens in place and movement through everyday experiences. The empirical findings offer important new insights that help expand the inclusive cities and communities’ discourse through the voices of disabled and non-disabled people, around issues of equity, access, and inclusion. Furthermore, the research helps lay the foundations to guide future urban policy and research on planning inclusive cities and communities from the position of disability justice and human diversity.