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The People’s Parks and Sidewalks: Environments of the Early Disability Rights Movement

Sat, April 1, 8:30 to 10:00am, The Drake Hotel, Huron

Abstract

The campus and town of Berkeley, California, are well known as hotbeds for student activism during the late 1960s and early 1970s. While the battles of the Sixties had national and international relevance – focused on Civil Rights, free speech, and the Vietnam War – they also had local import, particularly for the development of public spaces and infrastructure in the City of Berkeley. In this paper, I trace two developments that stemmed from local activism: the People’s Park, a green space that activists sought to save from private development; and a Wheelchair Route, the first of its kind, that created sidewalk curb cuts across more than 100 blocks. Advocates for these sites – both of which were developed during 1970-1972 within blocks of one another – emphasized the need for citizen input on city planning. Their related histories present a link between two phenomena of the 1960s that do not frequently share space in historical narratives: Environmentalism and Disability Rights.

The intersection of agendas around parks and wheelchair access in this moment, I argue, suggests commonalities among two movements that significantly shaped environmental design in the last half of the twentieth century. Over the decades to follow, however, supporters of an “environmental” planning approach and advocates of accessibility found more conflict than harmony. Ecological design advocates proposed natural surfaces and flexibility in regulation, while accessible design relies on smooth surfaces and the firm enforcement of building codes. Today, agendas of sustainability and inclusivity still come into conflict in areas ranging from energy efficiency to transportation design. In examining this historical case, I ask what we can learn about the politics of environmental design from the conflicts and alignments between these distinct historical movements.

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