CERESUltra

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KaterinaBucket
@KaterinaBucket

i've also been called ableist for my opinions on cars and urban planning. and here's the thing, while i do recognise that i'm at least somewhat lucky to be able to carry groceries several kilometres (though not always, and certainly not easily) if(let's be real: when) i were more disabled i'd kinda just be fucked? it's not like the second you can't walk 5km you get a free car and gas money. not that that'd be my preferred solution anyway. honestly it'd just make me want my neighbourhood to be that much more walkable that much more urgently. like, north american suburbs are an accessibility disaster and i feel like that should be obvious? at the very least begging people for whom the status quo does work to remember that disabled people with less money than them exist


KaterinaBucket
@KaterinaBucket

Fellas I fucked up my shoulder like two days after I posted this and it's still sore, boy do I wish the nearest grocery store was a hell of a lot closer cause driving still ain't an option


shel
@shel

When I had my accident back in August that has left me with some lasting brain damage one of the first things I noticed was written on my paperwork in big bold text NO DRIVING.

Given how long this concussion has lasted with it still be unsafe for me to drive, I am so fucking grateful I live in such a walkable city with robust public transit. Otherwise I would not have been able to get to any of my many doctors appointments and exams these past four months let alone be able to get myself food. I am able to still live independently with only occasional help from others. If I lived in car dependent suburbs I would be completely dependent on other people to get basic needs met.

Looking at this from a social model of disability lens, the car dependent urban planning model would have disabled me in ways that dense walkable urban planning enables me to still meet my basic needs when I’m now no longer capable of driving a car. Quite similarly, many other disabled people cannot drive cars but can still live independently so long as they live in a dense walkable city with good transit. Good luck living alone in car dependent suburbs if you’re not sighted.

And something that Very Online ableism discourse never seems to take into account is that near universally every public transit agency offers a service where if you’re truly too disabled to take public transit they will just drive to your residence and pick you up to take you where you need to go. In Philly it’s called CCT and in general it’s called Paratransit or Community Transport. If you get a letter from your doctor you can access this service to close the gap. If you need paratransit but the gatekeeping is keeping you out, that’s a problem with the way we treat disability not a problem with the urban planning that enables more people to be able to live independent of desired

Also like, in some countries they have these tiny cars that disabled people can use in car free areas that are perfectly appropriate for daily needs and aren’t bulking huge SUVs that can drive 80MP. If what you need is a mobility aid, it doesn’t need to be as intrusive, destructive, or dangerous as most cars.

Everything that cars enable for disabled people could be better enabled through another method than fucking over environment for the entire planet with huge dangerous combustible boxes of steel whizzing around at maximum velocity across incredible distances.

A car may be the best option for a lot of people right now but if we are going to survive climate change then we need to create the built environment where the car is not necessary and better options are available.


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in reply to @KaterinaBucket's post:

I live in a city where it makes little sense to have a car. A few years ago, I was sufficiently incapacitated that doing groceries was a bad idea. I got them delivered instead. Now I'm a bit better and I either walk the 10 minutes or I cycle or I use an e scooter. I do not think my capacity to do grocery shopping would be significantly improved if it was possible for me to drive & to park at the store. (though I would be able to buy more stuff at a time, admittedly)

But that's kind of the thing. If you design a suburb for cars then just take away the cars then the suburb is badly designed. The transportation and the environment need to match. But it's nicer when you can solve your problems via a short walk.

in reply to @shel's post:

Right!?!! Over here we’re about to ban parking on sidewalks (at fucking last), implementing a low emissions zone in the city centre, taking away the occasional parking space for street bins (we have huge street bins for garbage collection), and building the occasional low traffic neighbourhood.

And of course the assholes immediately pop up to ask: but what about The Disabled? And it’s bad faith motivated reasoning of a scale that a conspiracy nut would find compelling. Just straight up pretending that closing off a shortcut is the same as removing all access to a neighbourhood, or that being unable to take high-emissions vehicles into the middle of the city is removing access to Marks & Spencer for people who can’t walk as if you could park in the bus lane out front right now with the right placard. These same assholes don’t care that their parking makes it impossible to get down the street safely.

And yet if I suggest these measures are good for me in terms of accessibility their solution is that I ought to spend £300 a month on an unnecessary vehicle with annual paperwork and maintenance in order to – what, exactly? Drive to an edge-of-town strip mall in order to tire myself out getting to and around a massive supermarket at a cost of more steps than my local one?

Meanwhile when I’m well enough to use it (probably 4 months of the year) the e-bike is a massive boon – even if I can’t get more than a mile from home I can still do so much because I can go from my front door directly to where I’m going, park directly outside and get to all sorts of places that would be impossible to park a car near.

Anyway, sorry for the rant. I’m so tired of people developing a sudden concern for accessibility the moment that particular concern might justify the car-centric status quo while being just as quick to refute any suggestion that accessibility might entail inconveniencing them by twenty seconds.