Cities with disabilities are those that present spaces and environments that impede or make it difficult for citizens to access, participate and interact, regardless of any loss or abnormality related to their psychological, physiological or anatomical structure or function. I invite readers to, with me, change the focus of the approach on disabilities, transferring to cities and built environments the inability to meet in a dignified and effective way the diversity of abilities and capacities inherent to human beings.
All people are unique and are born with skills and abilities that, when developed, lead to the fulfillment of their dreams. They can be professional, family, emotional, social, financial, among many others. When environments, services, equipment, products or instruments do not exist or cannot be fully used due to their dimensions (or due to misconception in their design), people are hindered from carrying out their daily activities in their social, professional, personal or family scope. Disability is “in the thing” itself, incapable of being used.
Throughout all the years that I worked as an architect and urban planner, I have not met anyone who presents the Renaissance proportions of the Vitruvian Man, whose illustration by Leonardo da Vinci (inspired by the work De Architectura, by the Roman architect Vitruvius Pollio) inspired the metric used in the conception, projects and planning of buildings, cities and everything that is around us that can make possible, hinder or stop the accomplishment of the tasks and actions of our daily life. The drawing depicts a naked man with his arms and hands outstretched, inscribed in a circle and a square, with all perfect proportions. The author sought to relate spaces to the body, arguing that buildings and their environments should be based on the symmetry and proportions of the human form. For him, the composition of the “enclosures of the immortal gods” would only be achieved from the exact proportion or similarity of the members of a well-constituted human figure.
