Guidelines issued to help new urbanists design for the disabled

A new book, Inclusive Housing, explains how to build in ways that reflect New Urbanism while meeting the needs of disabled people.

Advocates for the disabled have frequently complained that elevated porches and raised ground floors — common features of new urbanist houses — put unnecessary obstacles in the path of people who use wheelchairs.

Now, after a decade of contention, new urbanists and the disabled appear to have arrived, for the most part, at a meeting of the minds. The newly published Inclusive Housing: A Pattern Book, from the Center for Inclusive Design and Environmental Access (IDEA Center) at the University at Buffalo, is the first comprehensive guide to achieving New Urbanism’s aims while ensuring that nearly every new dwelling is accessible to individuals with impaired mobility.

The book — written by Professor Edward Steinfeld, who directs the IDEA Center, and Jonathan White, an architectural research and design associate at the Center — embraces the logic of New Urbanism and traditional neighborhood development (TND), and shows how residences in a variety of urban and suburban settings can be made “visitable” by the disabled.

Significantly, the 144-page paperback published by W.W. Norton ($39.95) opens with a message from Raymond Gindroz, a

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