In this book, I suggest that our communities need better planning to be
safely and easily navigated by people with mobility impairment and to facilitate
intergenerational aging in place. This requires us to think of mobility
impairment and inclusive design as land use and planning issues in addition
to understanding them as matters of civil and constitutional rights. Although
much has been written about the rights of people with disabilities, little has
been said about the interplay between disability and land use regulation. This
book undertakes to explain mobility impairment, as one type of disability, in
terms of planning and zoning. It is written with the hope that a better understanding
of disability in terms of planning and zoning will facilitate more
cooperative engagement between disability rights advocates and land use professionals
and that this in turn will lead to improved community planning for
accessibility and aging in place.
In this regard, the book offers a new perspective because there has been
very little challenge to the exclusivity of the civil rights paradigm in thinking
about disability