Nicole Badstuber, Associate Director - Traffic Engineer
At the AITPM National Conference, we heard that we all benefit when places are planned and designed with inclusivity principles at the heart of the outcome – that is when we create places where our communities feel safe and included.
We recognise that the needs of the communities we serve are diverse and dynamic. Those people travelling with children, those carrying heavy shopping or luggage, people with a temporary injury, older people, as well as the ‘average’ able bodied person, all benefit from safe, barrier-free and easily navigable public space and transport.
Unfortunately, the way we have often designed for mobility has built in biases and disadvantages for how people interact and experience places, particularly toward marginalised groups, which is possibly (counterintuitively) brought about by designing for the ‘average’. Mobility has therefore not been designed for all and instead we’ve assumed a form of exclusive mobility, exacerbating the mobility inequality gap.
Momentum is building to tackle these biases and to create more inclusive places for all, demonstrated by the buzz in the room during the Inclusivity sessions at the National Conference.
Implementing more inclusive design starts with taking incremental steps and trying something new. More inclusive design starts with challenging standard practice and our vantage points, at all stages of every project. We all have a professional responsibility as transport planners, engineers and designers to raise awareness of the challenges and access requirements of creating mobility for all and must innovate, problem-solve, plan and design places that work better for everyone.
As a call to action for us all, there are three key values AITPM members and the professional community at large could adopt for creating inclusive places that work better for everyone
And we echo Elizabeth Mildwater’s closing remarks of achieving success through incremental steps - win, win again, and win some more!
Recognising the momentum achieved at the Conference, we encourage AITPM to develop a roadmap that outlines actions our industry can take over the next year for creating more inclusive places.