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Disability and the city: international perspectives
- Author:
- IMRIE Rob
- Publisher:
- Paul Chapman
- Publication year:
- 1996
- Pagination:
- 200p., bibliog.
- Place of publication:
- London
People with disabilities are one of the poorest groups in Western societies. In particular, they lack power, education and opportunities. For most disabled people, their daily reality is dependence on a carer, while trying to survive on state welfare payments. The dominant societal stereotype of disability as a ‘pitiful’ state reinforces the view that people with disabilities are somehow ‘less than human’. In taking exception to these, and related, conceptions of disability, this book explores one of the crucial contexts within which the marginal status of disabled people is experienced: the interrelationships between disability, physical access, and the built environment. The author seeks to explore some of the critical processes underpinning the social construction and production of disability as a state of marginalization and oppression in the built environment. These concerns are interwoven with a discussion of the changing role of the state in defining, categorising, and (re)producing ‘states of disablement’ for people with disabilities. Focusing primarily on the United Kingdom, although with a substantial discussion of disability and access issues in the USA, the book also considers the role of the ‘design professionals’, architects, planners, and building control officers, in the construction of specific spaces and places, which, literally, lock people with disabilities ‘out’. From the shattered paving stones along the high street, to the absence of induction loops in a civic building, people with disabilities daily negotiate through hostile environments. Using a range of empirical material, the book documents how the environmental planning system in the United Kingdom is attempting to address the inaccessible nature of the built environment for people with disabilities, while discussing how disabled people are contesting the constraints placed upon their mobility.
Independent lives and the relevance of lifetime homes
- Author:
- IMRIE Rob
- Journal article citation:
- Disability and Society, 21(4), June 2006, pp.359-374.
- Publisher:
- Taylor and Francis
A problem for disabled people, particularly individuals dependent on the use of a wheelchair, is housing that is not easily usable due to physical barriers. A proposed solution by government is the adoption of lifetime homes (LTH) standards that are likely to become mandatory for all newly constructed dwellings in the private sector in England by 2008. It is, therefore, an appropriate time to take stock of LTH standards, and to evaluate to what extent they are able to address the problems for disabled people caused by physically inaccessible housing. In doing so, the article provides a critique of LTH standards, and suggests that while they are, in some respects, a positive development, they are not, in and of themselves, a panacea in relation to rectifying the shortfall of accessible dwellings.
The role of access groups in facilitating accessible environments for disabled people
- Author:
- IMRIE Rob
- Journal article citation:
- Disability and Society, 14(4), July 1999, pp.463-482.
- Publisher:
- Taylor and Francis
This article considers the contrasting ways in which disabled people seek to overturn socio-attitudinal, political and physical barriers to their mobility and access requirements in the built environment. It documents how disabled people are attempting to influence the form and content of local authority access practices and policies, through the context and contours of access groups. Concludes by discussing how some of the wider structural and agency-level constraints on disabled people's political and policy interventions in access issues might be removed.
Shared space and sight loss: policies and practices in English local authorities
- Authors:
- IMRIE Rob, KUMAR Marion
- Publisher:
- Thomas Pocklington Trust
- Publication year:
- 2011
- Pagination:
- 7p.
- Place of publication:
- London
This research considered the policies and practices of English local authorities in developing shared space schemes in urban environments, and their impact on people with sight loss. In particular why local authorities adopt shared space schemes (which break down the demarcations between motor vehicles, pedestrians, and other road users) and how much public consultation is done in the process. The research comprised interviews with policy officers in ten local authorities, as well as access officers and people with sight loss. Follow-up case studies also took place in three of the local authority areas. Key findings and implications for policy and practice are listed.
Disability and the implications of the wellbeing agenda: some reflections from the United Kingdom
- Authors:
- EDWARDS Claire, IMRIE Rob
- Journal article citation:
- Journal of Social Policy, 37(3), July 2008, pp.337-355.
- Publisher:
- Cambridge University Press
- Place of publication:
- Cambridge
A wellbeing agenda has emerged in government that seeks to promote a "politics of happiness" in which citizens are, as the New Economics Foundation put it, "happy, healthy, capable and engaged". This article explores the wellbeing agenda in the UK, and its implications for disabled people, arguing that it is unlikely, in its present form, to contribute to the development of social theoretical, or more politically progressive, analysis and understanding of disablement in society. This is because of the emphasis on biologism, personality and character traits, and a policy prognosis that revolves around self-help and therapy, or individuated actions and (self) responsibilities.