The IPS project investigates the social justice problems which arise when city streets are not accessible to, or inclusive of, disabled pedestrians. Older people, and parents or carers who navigate through streets with young children, are often disadvantaged by the same types of barrier that affect disabled people.

The project has three main objectives:

1. Experiential: To advance understanding of the causes and impact of street exclusion; 
2. Legal: To advance understanding of how law is, and could be, used to make public space more inclusive; 
3. Perceptual: To advance understanding of whether and why exclusionary public space is regarded as a minority issue and to foster greater awareness and solidarity. 

Geographical Focus

The problems the IPS project is concerned with are relevant to all countries. Our particular focus is on five countries – India, Kenya, the Netherlands, the UK and the USA. 

In each of these countries, we selected two cities as sites for our empirical work. These were:

• Delhi and Pune, India;
• Nairobi and Mombasa, Kenya; 
• Utrecht and Almere, Netherlands; 
• Leeds and Glasgow, UK; 
• Syracuse (New York) and Atlanta (Georgia), USA. 

Methods

The project took a transdisciplinary, comparative and participatory action research approach. Methods used included: 

• extensive legal analysis addressing relevant law in each country, including a more local focus on city-level laws;  
• interviews with disabled and other pedestrians in each of the ten cities;  
• story-telling and film-making (documentary-style and virtual reality) with the same pedestrians; 
• interviews and focus groups with legal, policy/planning and activist stakeholders. 

Duration and funding

The first phase of the Inclusive Public Space project began on 1 January 2019 and will end on 30 June 2025. It is funded by a European Research Council Advanced Grant (Agreement No 787258).

We plan to build on work done in this first phase, particularly to generate impact and change. All outputs are open access and freely available for public use. Please use them!