Abstract: The article highlights the importance of a multisensory approach in urban design and architecture as a way to build a city that is truly for everyone. Through a series of real experiences of persons with visual disabilities moving through the streets of Lima, it describes the important support provided by multiple sensory details and stimuli during navigation. It also proposes an approach to an inclusive system of public spaces through multisensory diversity.
Keywords: Urban design, public spaces, visual disability, multisensory design.
Article content.
Calling for a multisensory dimension in architecture and urban design might appear redundant. Academic training emphasizes proportions, scale, function, formal aspects, meanings, behavior, sensations and related matters. Sensory aspects are also considered—especially visual features and textures—and acoustics is studied as a specialization. However, smells, sounds and kinetic experience more generally are only rarely taken into account in the design process.
Today, architects and urban planners face important challenges. The idea of an “inclusive city” or a “city for all,” including persons with disabilities, is not merely a common aspiration; it is something highly concrete that is largely built through the physical environment. That is the work of architects. This raises the question: how can we design public spaces for everyone if we, as architects, are not trained to understand the particular sensory experiences of persons with visual disabilities? It is therefore essential first to experience urban multisensory environments, then to develop tools that allow us to catalogue that experience and to include persons with disabilities in the design process.
I would like to share some personal experiences that showed me the importance of sensory cues for persons with visual disabilities. A few years ago, I was driving a friend with low vision toward a place she knew where she could take public transport. We were on Pershing Avenue; I was distracted by our conversation when she told me, “we’re getting close, slow down.” At that moment we were on the Pershing Avenue bridge over Brasil Avenue in Lima. I asked her—perhaps not very appropriately—“How did you know?” She replied, “because I felt the road rise a little on the bridge; whenever I go to Metro on Pershing, I notice that.” I perceived the slope too, but it was not a landmark that stood out in my own mental map. For her, however, it was important, and she was attentive to that reference point.
On another occasion, I met a blind friend at a bus stop on Brasil Avenue and later accompanied him to a stop in the opposite direction. As he walked and scanned with his cane, he was practically the one guiding the route because he had memorized all the characteristics of the sidewalks, kiosks and textures. He warned me that we were reaching the corner. I asked how he knew, and he said, “I know the ground,” then described it in detail. I often walk there and had never noticed those details. He even knew whether the traffic light was green or red from the sound of vehicle engines.
Similar experiences have shown me that we tend to observe streets at eye level and from a certain distance. The body has kinetic memory, but in general people are not fully conscious of all the details involved in walking. Most people do not constantly stumble, which suggests that we perceive what is important for movement at a given speed, but often less consciously.
Each person clearly prioritizes in memory what is important for moving, locating themselves and staying safe. Sight accounts for a large proportion of our sensory capacities; others may say touch is more important, while hearing may be the most important sense for balance and safety. What matters here is that we are multisensory beings: consciously or unconsciously, we use all our senses in everyday movement.
Yet urban design is still planned fundamentally around sight: streets, green areas, street furniture and traffic messages, including signs and vertical and horizontal road markings. In recent years, audible aids, tactile paving and Braille signage have been introduced in public-transport stations and stops to improve accessibility for persons with visual disabilities. Yellow raised guidance strips have also been installed on some streets in the historic centers of Lima and Arequipa and in districts such as Miraflores. However, their application is not yet standardized and, according to many persons with disabilities we know, can be confusing.
Is this where accessibility for persons with visual disabilities ends—at a guidance strip attached to the pavement? Is that enough? Is this how we will build streets for everyone to enjoy?
On one occasion, I visited a blind friend in his neighborhood in San Borja. As expected, he described in great detail every step we took: leaving his house, the shape of the corner, the route to the local shop, the form of its entrance, the sounds of conversations and the sense of open space near the entrance, and even some low walls outside that he always took care to avoid. I discovered that he really enjoyed this route because he would meet people he knew at the shop. We then went to the park near his house—a very well-maintained, quiet park with leafy trees, flowers, closely cut grass, benches and everything a park is “supposed to have.” I asked whether he liked it. He said yes, but without much enthusiasm: “it’s quiet.” He then told me he did not visit it often. When I asked which place in Lima he liked most, after thinking for a few minutes he replied, “Kennedy Park!” I said, “but that’s not near your house,” and he answered, “no, but I like it because there are lots of people, children playing, and things to eat!”
Perhaps this particular friend enjoys the sound of people talking and children playing, while the park near his house lacks the things that attract his attention and may therefore feel somewhat boring. I then wondered whether the same was true for all blind people.
Several months later, I decided to explore that question. I selected three blind friends who travel independently and asked each of them separately which open public places in Lima they visited most often and preferred. Their initial answers were libraries and health centers—not streets or parks. It took some effort to focus the discussion on open public spaces because they mainly use streets simply to move from place to place. But once they did focus on open public spaces, all three mentioned routes in central Lima, and two chose intensely commercial routes full of people, noise and even chaos. This may have been coincidental, but the persons with visual disabilities I interviewed appeared to enjoy places with many people and a specific purpose: interacting with others—not just a few people, but the bustle of an entire crowd sharing a space.
At that point we decided to begin research on accessibility and movement using the multisensory information contributed by persons with visual disabilities. Initial interviews showed that blind people often use city streets mainly to travel for necessary activities, and it was difficult to identify a conscious objective of simply strolling through the city. On reflection, walking merely for leisure is probably no longer a common goal for many residents of our city either.
Once immersed in field visits in the city center, we observed that participants greatly valued their autonomy in those spaces because they had memorized the sensory characteristics of the routes, including people, voices, sounds, smells, types of pavement and edges.
One of our initial hypotheses concerning the relationship between persons with visual disabilities and the use and preference of public spaces is that blind people may not enjoy certain parks in the same way as sighted people and may find them less attractive, while finding places with multiple sensory stimuli especially appealing.
Much residential-neighborhood planning centers on parks as places to rest, play, exercise and so on, and residents generally find them attractive. It is interesting to understand how a physical space as basic as a park can be perceived very differently depending on the sensory capacities of its users.
Most people enjoy spaces with other people. Kennedy Park in Miraflores is an iconic park and public meeting place in Lima, but we would probably not find the same consensus about the commercial streets of central Lima or streets filled with intense noise. These spaces offer countless opportunities to do different things and meet people—to interact, ask questions, buy things—and are full of sensory stimuli such as food and voices, while also containing chaos, aggressiveness and confusion.
We therefore find that not every type of park or public space will appeal to everyone. At the same time, urban planning needs to pay greater attention to systems of public spaces that provide many opportunities for encounter and enjoyment, offer multisensory diversity, and are more attractive both within neighborhoods and across the city as a whole.
From the perspective of architecture and urban planning, the right to the city should be not merely an aspiration but a clearly defined objective. Genuine knowledge of the needs of persons with visual disabilities begins with examining our own urban sensory experience. Interaction with people who experience the city differently deeply enriches an architect’s cognitive basis and prepares them to design cities that truly work for everyone.
