An Exploration of Disability and the Development Process

This paper explores the attitudes and practices of property developers and related agents in facilitating or constraining disabled people's access in the built environment. While acknowledging that the development process is characterised by a range of socio-institutional structures and relations which are insensitive to and ignorant of the needs of disabled people, we develop the proposition that developers' responses to disabled people are not necessarily invariant, predictable or reducible to a cost calculus. Rather, our evidence is illustrative of a heterogeneity of developers' attitudes and responses to the needs of disabled people. We conclude by commenting on practical and political possibilities for changing the social relations of the development process in ways which will incorporate access as an integral element of the design and development of the built environment.