Governance of Inclusive Cities: Realization of Disability Rights

The Disability & Law Initiative invites you to their first event this year, which will explore disability in the built environment through planning, design and public policy through the theme Disability, Inclusion and Integration in Big Cities. For this talk, our panellists will be McGill Law doctoral candidate Stephanie Chipeur, Jaccède Montréal founder Omar Lachleb, and RAPLIQ president Linda Gauthier.

Abstract

Urbanization is currently one of the most important global trends of the 21st century. Urbanization has a great potential to be a great engineer to achieve sustainable and inclusive development for all. About 6.25 billion people, 15 per cent of them with disabilities, are predicted to be living in urban centres by 2050.[1] Urban environments, infrastructures, facilities and services, depending how they are planned and built, can impede or enable access, participation and inclusion of members of society.

For the 15 per cent of the world’s population who live with a disability, (many of whom live in urban areas), available evidence reveals a widespread lack of accessibility to built environments, from roads and housing, to public buildings and spaces and to basic urban services such as sanitation and water, health, education, transportation, and emergency and disaster response and resilience building and access to information and communications. These accessibility limitations contribute greatly to the disadvantage and marginalization faced by persons with disabilities, leading to disproportionate rates of poverty, deprivation and exclusion. This situation also impedes the realization of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and other internationally agreed development goals.

A request for accreditation for 1.5 hours of Continuing Legal Education (CLE) for jurists has been made.