PiTech Public Space Accessibility Project

The Neurodiverse City (with Design Trust for Public Space)
An aerial photo of a streetscape, featuring a bright red and orange raised platform covering part of the sidewalk and street. Trees poke through the platform to provide shade, and there is a metal railing on the side of the platform that borders the street. The Neurodiverse City logo (overlapping olive green polygons with the words 'The Neurodiverse City' on top in white text) is superimposed over the bottom right corner of the photo.
Description: An aerial photo of a streetscape, featuring a bright red and orange raised platform covering part of the sidewalk and street. Trees poke through the platform to provide shade, and there is a metal railing on the side of the platform that borders the street. The Neurodiverse City logo (overlapping olive green polygons with the words 'The Neurodiverse City' on top in white text) is superimposed over the bottom right corner of the photo.

How can we make public spaces more accessible and inclusive?

There are over 2,000 public parks, nearly 600 privately owned public spaces, and countless other public areas in New York City alone. Despite being open to the public, these spaces are only truly accessible if they can be meaningfully used by all. Neurodivergence refers to a variety of learning, cognitive, and psychosocial disabilities, including but not limited to ADHD, autism, anxiety, depression, and PTSD. Neurodivergent (ND) people are often excluded from public space access because our built environments do not consider the cognitive, sensory, and social variation inherent in our neurodiverse world.

In 2023, the Design Trust for Public Space launched the Neurodiverse City project. Through this project, we seek to (1) learn from the experience and knowledge of neurodivergent community members, (2) collaborate with architects and design professionals to create potential improvements to two specific sites in New York City, 200 Water Street and PS112, and (3) develop a scalable solution to empower ND people in navigating public spaces in the city and beyond. As a Siegel Family Endowment PiTech PhD Impact Fellow this summer, my goal was to propose a digital tool to collect feedback and aid in evaluating public space accessibility with and for the ND community.

We do not necessarily aim to rigorously determine exactly what makes all spaces more accessible to all neurodivergent people, given the diversity of public spaces and the variety of people's personal preferences. Instead, we aim to design and develop crowdsourced solutions to provide ND people access to more information about what a space may be like, allowing for them to make more informed decisions about how and where they wish to engage in public spaces.

I am incredibly grateful to have had the opportunity to work with the Design Trust through the PiTech Fellowship, and I am excited to continue working on this project in the fall!

Photos

Group photo of 11 staff, fellows, and interns from the Design Trust for Public Space at the annual Design Trust Benefit, held at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library rooftop. The group members are wearing semi-formal attire such as suits and floral dresses, and all have wide smiles. In the background, there is a building with a sign reading 'Lord & Taylor' and a glass skyscraper behind it.
Description: Group photo of 11 staff, fellows, and interns from the Design Trust for Public Space at the annual Design Trust Benefit, held at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library rooftop. The group members are wearing semi-formal attire such as suits and floral dresses, and all have wide smiles. In the background, there is a building with a sign reading 'Lord & Taylor' and a glass skyscraper behind it.
Socrates Sculpture Park at sunset, with a large sculptural art piece in the foreground, three similar sculptural pieces and people sitting on grass and walking around the park in the midground, and an orange sunset over the Manhattan skyline in the background. The sculptural pieces, titled 'We are Nomads, We are Dreams' and created by Suchitra Mattai, are draped with colorful saris woven together. This park was the site of Design Trust's August 2024 Public Space Potluck.
Description: Socrates Sculpture Park at sunset, with a large sculptural art piece in the foreground, three similar sculptural pieces and people sitting on grass and walking around the park in the midground, and an orange sunset over the Manhattan skyline in the background. The sculptural pieces, titled 'We are Nomads, We are Dreams' and created by Suchitra Mattai, are draped with colorful saris woven together. This park was the site of Design Trust's August 2024 Public Space Potluck.


Links

Interview in Design Trust for Public Space [Website]

Get in touch!

If you're interested in public space accessibility, please reach out – I'd love to chat!

lucjia@uw.edu

@lucyajiang