Disability Issues and Planning Education: Findings from a Longitudinal Survey of Planning Programs and Lessons for Urban e-Planning

In the United States, planning education is frequently concerned with problems and solutions associated with the physical environment rather than socioeconomic barriers and solutions, including issues of workforce/workplace, community inclusion and participation, and e-democracy. Legislation such as the 1973 Rehabilitation Act and the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, generally place more emphasis on accessibility in the physical landscape than on social and economic barriers faced by people with disabilities. Through a longitudinal survey of selected university planning programs in the United States (in 2005 and again in 2013), this article discusses how the lack of attention to disability issues in planning literature may be linked to the education of planners and planning curricula. It also suggests possible areas of progress as an emerging group of planners have become concerned with the role of technologies such as telecommuting in facilitating the inclusion of people with disabilities into the social environment.