Beyond Ramps And Rails: Rethinking Accessibility In Urban Spaces Whose City Is It?

Tuba Athar

I walked into Delhi’s Lodhi Garden on a winter morning with my survey sheets. The sprawling lawns were alive with joggers, tourists, and families. But what caught my attention was a subtle discomfort: an old, retired man in his 90s came with his driver in his wheelchair, moving and enjoying every part of the garden. While a poor man with disability came with his family, he could only walk a few meters because he struggled to navigate uneven pathways as the paths were not equipped with handrails to support him.

Our urban spaces may look “accessible” on paper, but lived experiences tell another story. My journey of conducting surveys in formal green spaces like Lodhi Garden and in informal settlements such as slums in Delhi revealed how deeply political and social the question of accessibility really is.

The Promise of Accessibility

The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016

The Rights of Persons with Disabilities (RPwD) Act of 2016 guarantees accessibility as a right, not as charity. It recognizes that persons with disabilities must enjoy equal educational opportunities, employment, health, rehabilitation and recreation, transport, and public life. Accessibility, here, is tied to dignity and citizenship.

The Harmonised Guidelines, 2021

In line with this, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs released the HarmonisedGuidelines and Standards for Universal Accessibility in India (2021). These guidelines are ambitious in scope: they prescribe ramps, tactile paths, signage, toilets, and barrier-free design in parks, buildings, and transport systems. They aim to ensure that urban infrastructure is inclusive by default and vouch for universal design (UD). However, as I studied these guidelines more closely, I noticed a blind spot: they assume the city is neat, formal, and planned. What about the millions who live, work, and play in informal spaces such as slums, resettlement colonies, and unregulated neighborhoods?

The Missing Piece: Informal Urban Spaces

When I visited slums of Delhi, I found narrow lanes, open drains, and dense housing. Children played in tiny corners, often next to piles of discarded wastes or hazardous areas such as near drains. Adults with disabilities rarely stepped outside because the built environment offered no support.

The Harmonised Guidelines make no mention of such spaces. They are written for places like metro stations, airports, public and private institutions, shopping complexes, parks like Lodhi Garden or Sunder Nursery, not for the Seelampurs (one of the largest informal settlements of Delhi) of India. This omission is not just a technical gap but a political one. By ignoring informal spaces, the state implicitly declares them outside the imagination of accessibility planning.

The Politics of Access: Who Belongs in Green Spaces?

Lodhi Garden is free to enter; technically, anyone can enjoy its beauty. Yet my fieldwork revealed the unspoken hierarchies. Security guards quickly police poor families or informal workers lying on the grass. When asked about the question of moving confidently while alone, the boys of the lower-income group with girls said‘no’.

Accessibility infrastructure existed, but uneven pathways and a lack of disability friendly design meant that people with disabilities still faced barriers. The message was subtle but clear: the garden was open, but not equally welcoming to all. Access, then, is not just physical but also social and political.

Accessibility Beyond Infrastructure

Too often, accessibility is reduced to ramps and rails. My research suggests it must be understood more broadly:

Social Accessibility- Do people feel welcome? Are poor families, disabledpersons, and children accepted in public spaces without being surveilledor stigmatized?
Political Accessibility – Are informal settlements and their residents recognized in planning frameworks, or are they left out because they do not fit the ‘formal city’?
Economic Accessibility – Can everyone afford to enter? Sunder Nursery, another site I visited, charges an entry fee. While it offers manicured lawns and sensory rich design, it excludes many low-income families who cannot pay.

Accessibility without addressing these dimensions risks being a hollow promise. Towards an Inclusive Planning Framework

If accessibility is to be real, not symbolic, urban planning must expand its imagination: ✧ Recognize Informal Spaces: Accessibility cannot stop at formal urban spaces and buildings. Guidelines must account for the lived realities of slums, resettlement colonies, and unplanned neighborhoods.

Build Belonging: Inclusion is not only about physical design but also about social acceptance. Training staff, sensitizing security guards, and fostering community ownership of green spaces are as important as that of creating accessible infrastructure.
Ensure Participation: Policies must be informed by the voices of those who are at the periphery including women, disabled persons, slum dwellers, and children. Accessibility should emerge from lived experience, not be imposed from above.
Keep it Affordable: Public spaces should remain free or low-cost to prevent economic exclusion. A ramp, handrails or tactile pavings means little if you cannot afford to enter the gate, you have little means to buy a wheelchair, or somebody to escort you.

Conclusion: Rethinking “Public” in Public Spaces

Accessibility, at its core, is about justice, about who gets to inhabit the city with dignity. My fieldwork journey showed me that ramps and tactile paths matter, but are insufficient. When poor families feel unwelcome in Lodhi Garden or shopping malls, residents are excluded from the state’s accessibility imagination. We must ask: whose city are we building?

To make accessibility meaningful, India’s guidelines must move beyond the formal city and embrace the informal, the marginal, and the invisible. True inclusion lies not in perfect infrastructure alone but in creating spaces where everyone belongs. Because accessibility is not just about building ramps, it’s about building belonging.

About the contributor

Tuba Athar is a research scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She is a fellow of the UPCP 3.o – Urban Policy and City Planning, cohort 3.o.

Acknowledgment: This article was posted by Urvashi Singhal, Research Intern at IMPRI.

Disclaimer: All views expressed in the article belong solely to the author and not necessarily to the organization.