Planning cities that are inclusive of people living with dementia
Ryerson professor Samantha Biglieri developed easy and low-cost ways to make public consultations more accessible for people living with dementia through her research.
Photo credit: Samantha Biglieri
City planning should be inclusive of everyone – from participation in public engagement sessions to the built environment itself – says Ryerson University School of Urban and Regional Planning professor Samantha Biglieri.
The researcher is exploring how city planning can better engage people living with dementia and build neighbourhoods that are accessible to them. Alzheimer’s disease is the leading cause of dementia, which is an umbrella term describing symptoms progressively affecting memory, spatial navigation, cognitive abilities and behaviour. Alzheimer’s Disease International estimates that in 2020 there were over 50 million people in the world living with dementia, a number that is expected to increase to 152 million in 2050. (external link, opens in new window) Despite most research being focused on congregate living facilities, professor Biglieri notes the majority are expected to reside in their own homes, and “they deserve access to their neighbourhoods, just like everyone else.” There is often a belief that people living with dementia are not capable of participating in the community. “People living with dementia face immense stigma. It’s often to do with perceptions of incapacity that are misplaced,” she said. “Often, the barriers to getting around comfortably have to do with the environment itself being inaccessible, as opposed to it being the fault of the individual.”
As part of her research and for when in-person consultations return, professor Biglieri has developed several recommendations on how urban planners can make public open houses about proposed projects more accessible for people living with dementia. “In producing this piece of research, I wanted to do it in such a way that a planner could pick up those recommendations tomorrow and do them. So it’s part changing the process, changing the access, but also changing how a planner might see someone living with dementia as capable of being a part of planning processes,” said professor Biglieri.
“I think the purpose of urban planning is to work towards justice,” she said. She notes that planners can do this in three ways: through built environment outcomes, through helping a diverse range of people access the planning process and by encouraging planners to consider other perspectives and needs outside of their own experience.
Professor Biglieri’s easy and low-cost suggestions for changes to the public consultation process ranged from planners avoiding long presentations, to using larger fonts on written materials and considering noise and light levels in the room. She also highlighted how planners could shift their approach to attendees to be more inclusive of people living with dementia. She observed that when staff used less specialized language and did not rush people, it made a big difference. Even simply switching from asking if someone had any questions to offering to tell the person about the project is helpful, and influences how the individuals with dementia feel about their experience at the open house.
Other findings included participants with dementia often preferring a circular layout to the information boards, which they could review at their own pace, as opposed to presentations. Clear, targeted messages are better, as is avoiding dense paragraphs.
For this project, professor Biglieri accompanied several people living with dementia to municipal planning open houses in a community in southern Ontario, and observed and interviewed them about their experiences. She selected open houses as they are often a mandatory part of the municipal planning process in Ontario, and rather than create a new type of consultation session, she wanted to make the statutory events more accessible. “This way, there is likely to be more uptake of these recommendations by planners in practice,” she said. She notes that commonly used public engagement tools must become universally accessible, so that people living with dementia and others with disabilities can fully participate in community planning – and design for a collectively accessible future.
Professor Biglieri’s article on this research in the Journal of the American Planning Association (external link, opens in new window) was turned into a shorter piece that was included as a takeaway for practice for planning professionals in a recent edition of the American Planning Association’s Planning magazine.