Disabilities, The Design of Urban Transport Systems and the City: A Situational Analysis

This article deals with the issue of inclusion and exclusion of actors in the development and maintenance of new and existing technologies. I will perform a situational analysis for two reasons. First, I will show that it is appropriate to select as the object of study a situation where two arenas meet: the arena of urban transportation and the arena of accessibility. Rather than being defined by technologies and knowledges, these arenas are defined by concerns: the first one on how best to provide mobility for citizens; the other one on how best to provide accessibility to people with disability. Technologies and knowledges in use will make sense in the set of relations that compose the arenas and their interactions. In this particular analysis I will focus on the attempts of certain actors to make the Transmilenio system accessible to persons with disability.