No Street Works for Everyone?

No single street met every need. That was the point.

Read on Habitat International I ScienceDirect · View Dataset on Hugging Face

The Big Idea

Street Review is a people-powered audit that asks:

Who actually feels welcome here—and who doesn’t?

I built Street Review around interviews, focus groups, and structured ratings to see how different communities experience the same streets. In Montréal, one finding stood out immediately: not a single street satisfied all intersectional needs. Once people began discussing the images together, the conversation became more revealing. They were not simply rating streets. They were negotiating what “inclusive” really meant.

Why This Matters

Inclusive streets are not just a matter of ramps and benches. They also have to signal belonging across cultures, ages, and mobilities. Conversations can shift how people understand accessibility, but inclusivity is harder to settle. Comparing pre- and post-visit ratings showed how familiarity reshapes judgment, which points toward context-specific, diversity-sensitive design rather than one-size-fits-all fixes.

How I Did It

Participants: 28 in interviews/focus groups, with 12 providing structured ratings. Sampling: 20 streets × 3 vantage points × 2 images—60 locations and 120 images chosen for diversity in land use, history, density, greenery, and amenities. Data: 600+ descriptors distilled into four core dimensions—Inclusivity, Accessibility, Aesthetics, Practicality. Analysis: Thematic coding, LDA topic modeling, and correlation checks across intersectional groups.

What I Found

Most streets performed adequately but rarely excelled across all dimensions. Accessibility and practicality tended to move together; aesthetics was less predictable. Barriers varied by identity: LGBTQIA2+ participants, mobility-impaired users, elders, and newcomers often flagged different frictions. Group dialogue sharpened awareness of accessibility gaps even when debates over inclusivity remained unsettled.

Where This Can Be Used

For urban planning, the method makes room for both solitary judgment and collective discussion. For policy, it points toward multilingual cues and cultural signals that say, in effect, “you belong here.” For research, it offers a way to adapt Street Review across cities and contexts without pretending that inclusion looks the same everywhere.

Visuals

Sixty locations representing diverse street contexts.

Descriptors grouped into four main dimensions.

More: Habitat International · Dataset

Tags: Inclusive Urbanism · Street Design · Accessibility · Inclusivity · Participatory Methods · Montréal