Mindful Streets: Examining the politics and practices of everyday mobility negotiated by those who are neurodivergent and the potential for more inclusive (and just) street design for ‘all’

Abstract

Accommodating ‘all abilities’ in the planning and design of streets and transport-spaces has been a longstanding, yet unmet, objective in transportation planning. Although the discipline has been striving to become more inclusive with efforts to plan for ‘complete streets’ that accommodate diverse mode-users of ‘all ages & abilities’, the ways in which different abilities are planned for often remain limited. This is evidenced in cursory and unnuanced considerations that do not engage with the relational lived experiences of getting around whilst dis/abled or differently abled (Stafford et al., 2022). As such, despite objectives to accommodate ‘all’ abilities in complete streets planning paradigms, differential mobilities produced by being differently abled can remain under-considered. This is especially true for people who experience cognitive difference or who are neurodivergent, whose mobility needs are too often not well-articulated and are entirely or nearly absent from inclusivity considerations.

The misalignment between the promises and outcomes of planning for complete streets inclusivity promises is representative of a broader tension in the planning and design of transportation, wherein inclusive-transportation paradigms are constrained within wider politics of automobility and rationalist legacies within the transportation planning discipline. In this, for what (and whom) the street functions is contested within an inertia of autocentric values, ideologies, and ways-of-planning that have proven difficult to unsettle.

However, the resultant status-quo of flattened and ‘one-size-fits-all’ approaches to accommodating differential abilities cannot be upheld. As of 2022, 8 million people across Canada live with some form of dis/ability. Particularly, many of those people fall within the umbrella of being ‘neurodivergent’, including in developmental, learning, and mental-health dis/abilities. Notably, those with development dis/abilities (including Autism Spectrum Condition) were the most likely to report unmet accommodations needs (70%). Moreover, learning dis/abilities, such as Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), were the second-most emergent form of dis/ability for youth (after only mental-health dis/abilities) (Statistics Canada, 2024a). In this, there is an evident need for transportation planning to challenge the current ways in which neurodivergence is included within the efforts to plan for ‘all’ abilities; but the question then becomes, how?

Utilizing a framework informed by both the neurodiversity paradigm, that reframes neurodivergence not as a deficit but rather part of the full-spectrum of cognitive ability and Mimi Sheller’s Mobility Justice, that situates transportation planning within the politics and production of mobilities across the macro, mesa, and micro-political, the enclosed thesis responds to this gap in a three-fold approach which 1) explores how politics of automobility continue to shape emergent transportation-planning paradigms, 2) engages with the lived-experiences of getting around in everyday travel for people who are neurodivergent (those who identify as either Autistic or with ADHD) and 3) interrogates how such experiences can inform more-inclusive efforts to plan for ‘all abilities’ in transportation. To respond to the objectives, a qualitative research approach was designed based in both critical analysis of complete street planning documents (n=5) and sit-down (n=30) and go-along (n=14) interviews with people who are neurodivergent on their experiences of being-in-travel and navigating everyday-travel spaces. The findings were discussed in three manuscripts enclosed within this thesis.

Particularly, the first objective is addressed in manuscript #1, which examines the current politics of complete streets through a critical discourse analysis of current complete street design guidelines sourced from across Ontario. This review allowed for a better understanding of how complete street planning paradigms remain embedded within politics of automobility, and the resistant potential of complete streets to emulate vélomobility. This thus provided insight into how transportation planning both influences and is influenced from the macro-political (or from “above”). Of note, the first manuscript provides the basis in which the second and third manuscript were informed, noting that complete street planning paradigms are not untethered from broader societal power-structures which can then construct (or constrain) inclusivity-potential.

In the second manuscript, the focus shifted to then unpacking how mobility was then produced in micro-political mobility practices (or from “below”), tracing the differential mobilities produced by people who are neurodivergent. Particularly, this manuscript interrogated the lack of research that engages with dis/abled mobilities, and the relational and lived experiences of navigating and negotiating everyday travel. Based on 30 sit-down interviews with people who identify as Autistic or with ADHD, this analysis traced the emotional influences of mobility and how focus, habit, navigation, and sensory sensitivities constructed everyday mobility practices. Further, the mobile geographies of neurodiversity were then scaffolded; examining the adaptive tactics (relating to negotiating predictability and agency/interest) that emerged and could then subvert expectations for how mobility practice ‘ought’ to function.

Finally, the third manuscript examined the experiences of people who are neurodivergent in journeying everyday-transport spaces, and the ways in which differential ways-of-knowing can construct capabilities on the street. Guided by go-along interviews conducted in Waterloo, ON, this manuscript identifies specific transport-spaces that can be overwhelming or disorienting for people who are neurodivergent (including transit stations/stops, shared-spaces, and intersections). From this, recommendations were made for rescoping efforts to plan for ‘all abilities’ which consider neurodivergence and can have the potential to more-inclusively engage with the many ways in which ability is relationally and pluralistically constructed.

Overall, this thesis provides transportation planning scholars and practitioners with an alternative framework for confronting the complex politics that then construct for whom streets and everyday-transport spaces function; interrogating how to more meaningfully- and mindfully- plan for ‘all abilities’ on the street and in transport spaces. Aptly, throughout this research, transportation planning, particularly complete street planning paradigms, are (re)situated within the production of mobilities as a means to close-the-gap between current complete street initiatives, and their mobility-justice potential (Sheller, 2018).