Your place or mine?

The way people experience a place is influenced by their social, cultural and economic background. So if you are designing or managing a place to meet everyone’s needs, you have to understand all those complexities. If you don’t, you may exclude different types of people, without meaning to or even realising it.

Take the Idea Store in Whitechapel. It won the RIBA Inclusive Design Award in 2006, and the judges commented that its inclusiveness comes from its openness. For a library, it has an exciting and dynamic exterior. It has accessible, clear entrances with no barriers - even an escalator that whips you up from the street. But it is interesting that despite being so inviting, at CABE we have come across some young Muslim women who don’t feel very comfortable once inside. Its open plan design feels lively but also makes it noisy and busy; the young women feel selfconscious with boys hanging around in groups, and the staff are not diverse enough to feel protective. They would welcome some quiet female-only space to study in.

Balancing these diverse needs comes alongside good physical access, of course – revolving doors, steep gradients, inaccessible toilets and poorly lit bus stops will all signal “not for me”. Meeting access regulations like part M as well as the Disability Discrimination Act is still work in progress – once past the entrance, many places remain hard to negotiate.

A great place is where designers have considered how wheelchair users move around the space - take Vauxhall Cross, for instance, with its wide footpaths. It’s where housing has been provided in tenure-blind, high-density blocks that are socially diverse, like at Adelaide Wharf in Hackney.Or it’s where threatening, unpleasant stretches are given careful, elegant lighting that turn them into spaces which feel safer for vulnerable people, such as the Promenade of Light at Old Street.

Making a place inclusive has a particular resonance for those working in the capital. Londoners speak over 300 languages, come from over 150 countries and practice at least 14 faiths. London is home to over 3.1 million women, 51% of the population, a third of whom are from Asian, African and minority groups (According to the Greater London Authority’s 2006 Women in London report).

Initiatives such as New Deal for Communities (NDC) are having a real impact by targeting investment aimed at making London more inclusive. Spa Fields in Islington, for instance, is now a great park after redevelopment part-funded by the EC1 NDC. Five years ago it was grimey and uncared for, and was avoided by residents. But motivated designers listened to the community to find out what they wanted from the space and how they would use it.

Important design decisions were based on this consultation. A workshop with local women, run by the Women’s Design Service, fed back that a path running through a small depression felt unsafe. The designers moved the path to one side of the space to provide better visibility and encourage people to walk along it. The new route opens up a stretch of grass where people play football, or sit in the summer. {mosimage}

Finding out that local people thought the park was dark and hidden, the designers opened it up by making clear, well-defined paths and removing walls. A new entrance passage encourages people to use the park as a route or shortcut, and there is an elegant mirrored panel at the end that acts like a periscope, to provide better views into the park.

It is not all about opening up the space. Private areas are cordoned off from many angles, but remain accessible and with clear sightlines both in and out. They back attractively onto a church or the brick walls of local restaurants. Discrete spaces are marked by rows of lavender or the original wire fencing which has been retained and covered in ivy. The commitment to working with the community spread even to the park’s construction. Thirteen local young people were given work experience with the construction company on the site, and three of them went on to get permanent jobs. And Spa Fields is not just a better place for the local community because of their involvement. Office workers have somewhere to sit and eat lunch or to walk home through. It’s a better place for everyone.

Other initiatives in London, such as the Inclusive Design training being run by Urban Design London, are helping the built environment professions to create places like this. Here at CABE, we have just published a briefing, Inclusion by design: Equality, diversity and the built environment which has everyday examples that demonstrate how to create places that work for everyone. We've also committed ourselves to promoting equality in the built environment - see our Equality Scheme and action plan, both of which are available at www.cabe.org.uk.

The fact is that when we don’t consider all these factors, social, cultural and economic inequalities are literally being built into new places, with long term impacts on the quality of people’s lives. Good inclusive design, by contrast, can increase security, remove barriers, promote mobility, and improve health and wellbeing. All results that we think make it worth the collective effort both to understand these issues and to tackle them.

Callum Lee is co-author of the Campaign for Architecture and the Built Environment’s Inclusion by design: Equality, diversity and the built environment.