Nearly 20% of the world’s population is estimated to be neurodivergent – a term that includes people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism, dyslexia, dyspraxia, intellectual disabilities, and mental health conditions like anxiety, depression, and PTSD. Despite the prevalence of neurodiversity, the planning and construction of community spaces usually does not take cognitive, sensory, and social overload into account, making many public spaces too overwhelming to meaningfully access.
Even with a national climate perpetuating stigma and misunderstanding of neurodivergence, researchers attribute the growing number of diagnoses to increased awareness and understanding of how human brains are made to function differently. The time is overdue for accessibility policy to reflect this growing understanding.
The Neurodiverse City is aiming to learn what makes a space inaccessible, through workshops and public space audits led in partnership with city agencies, PS112m, and NYC disability advocates including Center for Independence of the Disabled-NY, IncludeNYC, AHRC New York. This year, the Neurodiverse City coalition will be leveraging these learnings to pilot interventions on city streets and in public playgrounds to better understand what changes work and why.
As Lucy told our Public Space Blog last year, “We should prioritize designing with neurodiverse communities and not just for them. Neurodivergent people have immense expertise and knowledge grounded in their lived experiences.” For her fellowship, Lucy contributed insights on designing a technological tool for assessing public spaces for neuroinclusivity and synthesizing perspectives from the neurodivergent community.
Read her full report here: “Neurodivergence Research, Technology, and Public Space.”
More from the Neurodiverse City:
Share your thoughts on NYC’s accessibility with our online survey.
Read more about this project in Bloomberg City Lab
Check out Lucy’s writeup for Cornell Tech News: Crowdsourcing Urban Accessibility Information for the Neurodiverse City Project