Inclusive Design with the Spatial Justice Approach

Yasar Adnan ADANALI, Urban Planning Specialist, Center for Spatial Justice

When we consider inclusive design from the perspective of spatial justice, it can be noticed that there is a tension between the approach that emphasizes the constraint of social / political structure, especially in the discussions of space and disability, and the expert reflex ready to reduce accessibility and inclusion to the problem of architectural/urban intervention. On the one hand, accessibility is indeed a physical issue that is related to infrastructure/planning/architecture. But on the other hand, it is shaped by who the social forces find legitimate to exist in the public sphere and with the facilities of the public. Therefore, it is necessary to reconstruct the area of ​​expertise by learning from the struggles "from within" and "from below" in a way to liberate the social structure.
 

---

Yasar Adnan ADANALI

Yasar Adnan Adanalı is an urban planning specialist. He is the general director of the Center For Spatial Justice, of which he is among the founders. Since 2010, he has been teaching participatory design and community-based housing at the Faculty of Architecture at Darmstadt Technical University. In 2007 and 2012, he worked on the right to housing with the urban poor in the Dominican Republic, and between 2010-2012 he worked with the University of Stuttgart in the project of improving the Palestinian Refugee Camps in different cities of the Middle East with participatory methods. He is a fellow of the Ashoka Foundation and Bertha Foundation.