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Managing Accessibility — The Configurational Approach to the Inclusive Design of Urban Spaces



Author(s)

Valerio Cutini

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DOI:10.17265/1934-7359/2012.04.005

Department of Civil Engineering, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy

This paper concerns the theme of the universal accessibility to urban spaces, proposing the contribution of configurational approach to their inclusive design. Born in the first Nineties on the roots of the efforts and the studies for reducing material and architectural barriers for disabled people, such discipline extends its sphere and purposes so as to mitigate the effects of spatial exclusion of a wider and wider variety of human categories, up to virtually include any potential urban user. Several questions persuade that a merely functional approach, essentially based on the position of the located activities, cannot be said satisfying: only a configurational approach can account for the effects of the grid configuration on the actual accessibility of its spaces. Our research focuses on Italian urban settlements, which appear as ideal case studies, due to the typical consistency of their urban spaces, which, especially in the inner historical cores, are densely build, geometrically irregular and hence generally far from actually providing a universal material accessibility. Here the impedance of space is much more than a theoretical hypothesis and concrete interventions are generally requested to eliminate or reduce its barriers and to make space actually and safely usable. Rather than at indicating the technical solution of single urban problems, which of course are strongly different each other, the research aims at defining a method suitable for any local context. Such method, integrating into a reliable tool the configurational vision with the functional and interactional approach, will provide a hierarchy of urban spaces with reference to the necessity of their universal accessibility.

Accessibility, configurational analysis, inclusive design, town planning.