In past months I have had occasion to be driving west on Muhammad Ali to the medical complex. Driving there, I pass the massive construction project going on just to the east of downtown Louisville. It's officially called the Clarksdale HOPE VI Revitalization. It's the old Clarksdale housing projects, torn down and being rebuilt.
The blocks and blocks of buildings going up seem to be townhouses. Lovely designs -- don't look like the old low-income "projects" of my youth -- and of course, that's part of the idea behind all this.
Except.
Except they all have steps. Just like brownstones in New York. Steps up to the front door. Steps as far as I could see, creating the streetscape. Steps.
Now I have no doubt that the grand poobahs in charge of this are complying with all "laws" -- I'm sure there's a percentage set aside for "the handicapped" by law.
That's not what I'm getting at. I'm getting why we continue -- continue!! -- to build housing stock so that if we get older we're going to be forced into a nursing home, out of our homes. Continue to build places like this so if you've got somebody in the family who's in an accident or has diabetes and loses their legs you're going to have to be on a waiting list for one of the very few of those "percentages" that are accessible.
Why does it have to be this way? Is there no vision?
Every morning when I drove past this array of homes with steps, I could hear my friend Eleanor Smith of Atlanta's voice: "And they could have all been accessible!"
Yes, they could have.
Eleanor is the mother of the concept known as visitability. You don't hear much about it in Louisville.
These units I've been passing on Muhammad Ali look to me as though they're inspired by what's called the New Urbanism -- one of the silliest examples of which is Norton Commons, way the heck out in what used to be called the boonies.
And to hear Eleanor tell it, the New Urbanists simply don't like access.
'They could have all been accessible!'
Carrying on and up at Windy City
Windy City Pizzeria (2622 S. Fourth St.) has great pizza, but it also has steps -- a couple -- at its entrance.
I say, thus, that it's "inaccessible to wheelchair users." However...
One day when we were in there at lunch we saw the door open and a group of wheelchair users come in.
There were maybe 2 or 3 folks in wheelchairs and several more walking, and the walking folks lifted up the wheelchairs, with their riders in them, up over the steps while somebody held the door.
I don't know why, but I got the feeling that this group dined at Windy City regularly -- maybe they worked nearby.
And it didn't seem to bother them at all about getting in this way.
It left an odd taste in my mouth.
I've been trained by years -- ok, decades! -- working with disability activists around the country. I've been to meetings, conferences, demonstrations in Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, New York, DC with lots of folks in wheelchairs.
I've hung out with them, talked with them, sat in groups with them, interviewed them, written about them. Almost to a person, they believe firmly in this dictum: you don't let yourself be carried into buildings by well-meaning helpers. Besides not being dignified, it's dangerous for both the person being carried and the ones doing the lifting. Wheelchairs -- motorized ones -- can weigh a couple of hundred pounds, before even counting the person in the chair.
There's another issue at stake as well: activists say access is a civil rights issue, and they should not have to depend on "helpers" to get them in and out of buildings. As long as business owners can fall back on the "we'll help them" solution, real access will be resisted, because it's a bricks-and-mortar thing and it costs money.
But most people who are not disability activists think the activists' attitude is overly righteous.
What do you think?