Assuming able-bodied as standard through social and spatial relations, ideas, practices, processes, and institutions is called ableism today, a thinking that constantly references and brings about normativity. The disability studies author Lennard Davis describes that the social process of disabling arrived with industrialization and practices that are connected to late eighteenth and nineteenth century notions of nationality, race, gender, criminality, and sexual orientation (Davis 1997:3). However, identities of the abled are reproduced throughout history and within different fields, “whether it be the ‘species typical body’ (in science), the ‘normative citizen’ (in political theory), the ‘reasonable man’ (in law),” (Campbell 2011:44) as are ableist social and spatial settings.
The architectural and procedural styles of modernism in particular are generally described as generating forms, which seemed to deny human subjectivity and the differences in bodily experiences and forms. The ‘axiom of human domination of nature,’ the domination of scientific values and of human rationality, have been important influences on the modern movement, and the aesthetics were relying upon abstract purity of rational, geometric forms, and mass produced industrial technology. (Imrie 1996:80)
Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, planning was implicit in producing the modernist city, separating functional spaces and “producing environments functional to the needs of industry, providing for the material welfare, moral improvement, and aesthetic enjoyment of citizens.” (Healy 1995:261) The neighborhood unit, developed by Clarence Perry in 1922, was a civic center, a school, a kindergarten, a series of open green spaces, commercial facilities, and proximity to expressways, representing the constitutive features of a “village-like community” outside of the congested metropolis. Such an environment was designed to grant an ideal milieu for children to prosper. This scheme was widely adapted from the beginning. Since “contraception had a dramatic social impact” and “the 1930-31 census results confirmed a downward trend of births throughout Europe, with the steepest decline among the better-endowed types,” (Hebbert, 1999:443) the welfare of middle-class families became a major focus of planning. Regulatory norms were reproduced and performed through concepts such as the ‘isolated nuclear family’ that advanced industrialization, met the needs of capitalism for reproduction, gendered productive roles and an economic unity, and served as an “island of serenity in the gathering storm of modernization.” (Haeberle 1983)
The neighborhood unit proved to be an enormously persistent concept of modernist city planning and was extensively adopted by planners all over the world (e.g. Ecochard in Casablanca, LeCorbusier in Chandigarh, in China, Israel, etc.) in the 1950s when the discussions of Habitat dominated the planning discourse in Europe.
Another example of the conjunction of formal, aesthetic, and body-related concerns in urban planning and a crucial precursor for the development of the neighborhood unit was the garden city. Ebenezer Howards’ conception of the “Slumless, Smokeless Garden City” (1898) involved a construction of health that assigned the ‘insane,’ the ‘inebriates,’ and the ‘epileptics’ to segregated places outside the main center. This solution of segregation reflected the thinking and social practices of the time. (cf. glossaries on ugliness, beautification). For example, the “Ugly Laws” were introduced into most American western and mid-western cities. Also known as the “unsightly beggar ordinances,” these statutes prohibited “unsightly” people, beggars, and people with disabilities from visiting public spaces. “Deformed” people were seen as problems that would have to be managed as much as architecture or street layout. (Schweik 2009:67)
Urban problems such as disease, crime, and pollution were addressed through the concept of ‘beautification’. Health and aesthetic concerns, the desire for an eye-catcher in urban space, the aim to increase the productivity of the urban economy, as well as to educate the population with moral and civic values were important impacts in the City Beautiful Movement, a planning movement in North America that lasted from 1893 to 1929. Frederick Law Olmsted’s Park Movement is often seen as a predecessor. Daniel Burnham, who was responsible for the architectural planning of Chicago as the ‘ideal’ and ‘alabaster’ “White City” and later developed the “Plan of Chicago” with Edward Bennett, is also named as highly influential. The idea of beautification was influenced by the neo-classical style of the École des Beaux Arts, which emphasized monumental architecture, large avenues, and parks. The American Civic Association used the City Beautiful Movement for social planning in the form of slum reform. The First National Conference on City Planning and the Problems of Congestion in Washington in 1909 was highly influenced by the City Beautiful Movement.
The search for ‘normality’ and ‘purity’ was also evident in the thinking and writing of Le Corbusier: “all men (sic) have the same organism, the same function (…) the same needs” (1927:27) and “the establishment of a standard involved evoking every practical and reasonable possibility and extracting from them a recognized type conformable to all functions with a maximum output and a minimum use of means and workmanship and material, words, forms, colors, sounds…”(Ibid.). Finding this ‘standard’ was influential for the modern importance of function, and, as Le Corbusier argued, essential to architectural forms, which he defined as being “determined by the dimensions of man (sic) and the space he occupies.” (Imrie 1996:81)
In the year 1925, Le Corbusier developed the so-called ‘Modulor’. Based on the proportions of the human body, it represents a proportion schema to make it easier for architects to plan buildings. The Modulor provides a standard measure for the proportional relation between humans and buildings. The measure for this schema is a strong, muscular man standing upright, with no sign of physical or mental disability, 183 cm in height. As the golden ratio of architecture, the Modulor was applied, for example, during the construction of Chandigarh. There, parts of it were not only used as a template for the proportions of the buildings, but also for the entire city. Accordingly, the government buildings are situated at the “head,” and the city center in the “stomach”. During the habitat debate of the 1950s, Sigfried Giedion takes the biological determinism of the Modulor even further. Taking his cue from a study by P.A. Emery, he says that the standardization of architecture leads to “the inhabitants, who flock from the Sahara, Atlas, Morocco and Tunisia [to cities] in order to earn a living, understand how to utilize the most simple means in order to organize their surroundings—even in such ‘slums’—to their accustomed ways of living (…) After going through the trouble to examine the entire proportions of a house that belonged to a tram worker, they discovered—obviously unbeknownst to the person who built it—that it corresponded exactly to the proportions of the Modulor and the golden ratio.” (Giedion 1953) Taking the Modulor as a genuinely applicable standard, then, can be used to argue for a development that doesn’t destroy slums, but rather provides them with a ‘structural skeleton.’ The house thus becomes a site for teaching self-optimization and standardization.
The overall effect of such embodied standardizations is the denial of bodily diversity and differences and the projection of normality as one of able-bodiment. Critical sociologists and geographers have described the ‘ableist’ character of modernist ideas, as suggested by its concept of functionality based on assumed ‘sameness’ or ‘normality.’ Rob Imrie also writes that the modern ideal itself equates to a disabling space. (Imrie, 1996:80) The functional, moral, and economic imperatives underlying the modern planning efforts could also be termed as ‘ableist relations,’ as they point to ideas of ‘purity’ and a certain ‘standardization’ that relate not only to spatial but also social settings. (EE + CL + MH)
Sources:
Campbell, Fiona Kumari (2009): Concours of Ableism: The Production of Disability and Abledness, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
Le Corbusier (1927): "Towards a New Architecture”, London: Architectural Press, translated by Frederick Etchells.
Davies, Lennard J. (1997): “Constructing Normalcy” In Davis, Lennard J. (Ed.) The Disability Studies Reader, New York: Routledge. Pp. 3-19.
Gidieon (1953), Aix-En-Provence.
Haeberle, Erwin J. (1983): The Sex Atlas, New York: The Continuum Publishing Company, Online Edition:
Hebbert, Michael (1999): A City in Good Shape: Town Planning and Public Health. In: The Town Planning Review, Vol. 70, No.4. Liverpool: University Press. p. 433-453.
Healy, Patsy (1995): “Discourses of integration: making frameworks for democratic urban planning” In: Healy, Patsy/ Cameron, Stuart/ Davoudi, Simin/ Graham, Stephen and Madani-Pour, Ali (Eds.) Managing Cities: The New Urban Context, London: Wiley,
pp. 251-72.
Imrie, Rob (1996): “Disability and the City. International Perspectives”, London: Paul Chapman Publishing.Lyndon, Donlyn (1987): “Preface.” In Lifchez, Raymond (Ed.): Rethinking Architecture. Design Students and Physically Disabled People, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, pp. xi-xv.
Schweik, Susan (2009), The Ugly Laws, Disability in Public, New York/London: New York University Press.
