Neurodivercity – Lewis Shannon

AUTISM FRIENDLY CITY

NEURODIVERCITY

Lewis Shannon St. Catharine’s College

– Essay 3 Pilot Thesis

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Lewis Shannon St. Catharine’s College

Essay 3: Pilot Thesis 12th May 2020

4,760 Words Excluding captions, and bibliography

An essay submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the M.Phil. in Architecture and Urban Design (2019 - 2021)

– This dissertation is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the outcome of work done in collaboration except where specifically indicated in the text.

Contents

Introduction

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Autism Friendly City Autism City Autism Friendly

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Neurodiverse City Neurodiversity Neurodiverse City

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Conclusion

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List of Figures Bibliography

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‘Suppose then, (…) we were to study the theoretical origin of a city, would we also see the origin in it of justice and injustice?’

(Plato. Republic, 368c—370a)

Introduction The purpose of this project thus far has been to investigate a perceived lack of spatial provision for autistic people in the public sphere, as well as an under-representation or lack of participation in existing social infrastructures. These issues are further foregrounded by attention to recent governmental proclamations, and a suspicion surrounding the rhetoric of 'autism-friendly' cities, with a particular focus on Glasgow, which as of 2017 aims to become the first 'autism-friendly' city centre in the UK. (National Autistic Society, 2017) This essay intends to build upon an examination of this proposition, in order to extend a critical interpretation of the idea of an autism-friendly city, through an examination of its sought outcomes, and the proposed mechanisms intended to bring about its existence. In turn, this probing of an as yet indeterminate, or non-existent place, intends to negotiate a conceptual shift in how the provision of places seeking to accommodate neurological difference might be considered.

To this end, the illustration of a counterproposition in the form of the 'neurodiverse city' forms the object of an additional series of enquires of interest to this project.

Specifically, it serves as a proxy for explorations into a particular design approach; which intends to challenge the commonly held economically driven understanding of design as an exercise in 'problem-solving' (Dunne and Raby, 2013: 2). The proposition of a neurodiverse city also serves to explore the role that design might play in the mediation of socio-political issues, as part of a more fully encompassing interest in the utilisation of design as a vehicle for speculative, critical reflections of predominant social realities.

Concerning autism itself, any attempt to present an 'explanation' or 'outline', is to immediately insert oneself in the midst of a complicated history riddled with ongoing debate, confusion, and frustration. The most outstanding of which, and of primary interest to this project, lies between the clinical-medicalisation of autism its characterisation as a disability - insofar as this evokes narratives of 'less-than' 'impairment' or 'lacking', in contrast with recent 'social' and 'post-social' models of autism, the neurodiversity movement, and other such outlooks which instead frame autism as an alternative way of being in the world.

This tension, though singular has the capacity to radically expand or limit the future possibilities, outcomes, and lived experience for autistic people; medically, socially, politically, and as this essay will argue; spatially. All of which is to say nothing of the ontological possibility of knowing autism, itself a contentious topic (Yergeau, 2018: 54).

Further complicating the matter, is the issue of who can claim legitimacy to authoring such explanations. A rhizomatic multiplicity including medical professionals, researchers of various academic disciplines, politicians, charitable organisations, autism and disability advocates, families, carers, and of course autistic people themselves all maintain a stake in both; seeking to further understand autism and propagate models of understanding that produce beneficial outcomes.

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As such, this project does not seek to solve the provision of autism-friendly cities.

Instead, it seeks to utilise the methods and procedures of design in order to polemicise an alternative provision of 'autism-friendly cities' from the perspective of neurodiversity, such that critical reflections may take place. As a result of this position, the primary enquiries can be summarily described as; What is an autism-friendly city? On what basis is it autism-friendly? Are the ways in which an autism-friendly city is to be produced well-founded? Moreover, what do current attempts to establish autism-friendly cities tell us about current social realities?

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Fig.1 - Proposal for an Autism Friendly Neighbourhood: Skills Centre

Autism Friendly City

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Autism Friendly City Despite steadily growing representations of, and general interest in autism since it was first articulated and clinically recognised, it is almost certain that autism has always existed (Fletcher-Watson and Happé, 2019: 14; Murray, 2008: 10). This assertion's basis in the folk-tales of varying cultures notwithstanding, there is on-going debate regarding who; between Kanner's 'Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact' (1943), and Asperger's 'Die "Autistischen psychopathen" im kindesalter' (1944) was first to clinically identify and publish research on autism. Presently there is no definitive answer as it took several years for Asperger's work to be translated and made available outside of German-speaking countries. (Ibid, 2019) The term ‘Autism’ itself originated in 1908 when it was coined by Eugen Bleuler, using the Greek autos (Self) in order to describe the avoidance of social contact displayed by adults with schizophrenia (Ibid: 14). The term was subsequently appropriated by Kanner and Asperger, succinctly aligning with what Kanner later (1954) considered to be the two defining features of autism; "Extreme isolation and the obsessive insistence on the preservation of sameness" (Ibid: 16).

Between the eleven children included in Kanner's research, and the four case study children studied by Asperger there were many similarities including social withdrawal or atypical social behaviours; lack of eye contact, stereotypical movement and use of language, as well as an "intense delight in routine and the pursuit of special interests to the exclusion of all else – in the parents of many of their patients." (Ibid: 17) However, there were significant differences between Kanner and Asperger's accounts in areas as fundamental as the use and fluency of language, gross and fine motor coordination, as well as learning style and capacity (Ibid).

The differences between these early accounts of autism begin to point to the elusive nature of attempting to apprehend a consistent and useful working definition, which has spawned divergent views on support and education for autistic people that persist today (Ibid). It would be several decades before the clinician, and researcher Lorna Wing (herself the parent of an autistic child) and Judith Gould would publish the first paper (1979) which subdivided the atypical social behaviours of autistic children observed in early research into distinct social approaches; 'Aloof', 'Passive', and 'Active but Odd' (Ibid).

An epidemiological study of over nine hundred children, their research also brought an entirely new domain into consideration as it conceptualised the impact that 'imagination' had on the observed lack of symbolic or pretend play in autistic children which would underpin decades of 'Theory of Mind' models for studying autism (Fletcher-Watson and Happé, 2019: 19). However, it is likely Wing's 1996 book The Autistic Spectrum that represented the most significant shift in autism research as it elected to stress the variability between individuals within a given diagnostic category, the mutability of strengths and weaknesses across time, as well as the impact of the physical environment (Ibid).

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Now, autism is characterised as a lifelong developmental disorder (though 'condition' is likely more appropriate), thought of across multiple domains; biological, cognitive, and behavioural (Ibid: 3). This is useful because although 'autism has a genetic foundation, leading to neurobiological differences, it is diagnosed on the basis of a set of behaviours' as no reliable biological markers have yet been identified (Ibid: 30).

It is also important to stress the immense variability between autistic individuals; around 50% of autistic people are affected by a co-occurring learning or intellectual disability, which is to say autism is not interchangeably identifiable with 'special' or 'savant' skills (Ibid: 8). Additionally, the same clinically described feature may manifest in radically different forms between individuals – 'restrictive and repetitive behaviours' could signify anything from arranging toys in a particular way to an 'immersive and impressively detailed interest in organic chemistry' (Ibid: 33). Accordingly, we can describe 'how autism is diagnosed, but that's not the same as what it is.' (Ibid: 9)

Autism Friendly City "Different individuals, then, form associations with one person to meet one need, and with another person to meet a different need. With this variety of wants they may collect a number of partners and allies into one place of habitation, and to this joint habitation we give the name "city" (Plato. Republic, 369c)

In attempts to establish an autism-friendly city – to the extent that it intends to enable autistic individuals to lead healthy, independent lives as active citizens (Scottish Government, 2011) - this essay would assert that the city, as a polity, is the least critically considered aspect of this endeavour. Further, that its extant physical state "treated as fixed, dead, undialectical" (Soja, 1999: 114) leads inevitably to a constrained myopic view of potential intervention. As a result, ongoing projects to adapt existing towns and cities to become "autism-friendly", beyond requiring a more detailed view of autism and its historico-ethical relationship to cities, run counter to the implicit social contract that precipitates their existence.

The entanglement of the polis and a form of social contract can be observed across multiple domains; in its more natural form, forging associations, or allegiances with others to fulfil needs, further extricating us from the state of nature - as in the Socratic healthy city (Plato. Republic, 373b). Less obvious, are the distinct kinds of life that are enacted within the city; where 'simple natural life (zoe) is excluded (‌) and remains confined - as merely reproductive life - to the sphere of the oikos, "home"' (Agamben, G., 2008: 407). Contrasted against participation in the public sphere, which requires the subordination of bare life to another higher order of existence, a bios politikos in which human affairs materialise through lexis and praxis (speech and action) (Arendt, 1998: 24-25).

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This view is paralleled in Kantian conceptions of the human being that is fundamentally split between the modes of ‘natural necessity’ and ‘rational/moral freedom’. (Nussbaum, 2007: 131). However, the prerequisites of this freedom; to perform a political life, thus participating in the simultaneous use and creation of the city, realising the Aristotelian view of man as a political animal (Ibid: 27) is dependent upon more than the subordination of bare life, or physical necessity. Of equal importance are the underlying assumptions and logics which govern these resulting social structures.

For the ancient Greeks, this freedom or felicity was a state of being concerned, among other things with wealth and health (Arendt, 1998: 31). Incidentally, wealth and health also form primary goods in contractarian conceptions of the preconditions for social cooperation (Nussbaum, 2007: 64). Of more fundamental importance, however, is the supposition that those engaging in reciprocal exchange for mutual benefit are "free, equal, and independent" (Ibid: 28) or "roughly equal in power and capacity" (Ibid: 103).

A condition which necessarily projects a normative view of personhood inextricably predicated on a capacity to become "fully cooperating members of society over a complete life" (Ibid: 108), or on exhibiting possession of; to an essential ‘minimum degree’ the ‘mental and moral powers’ (Ibid: 130).

In the case of disability, impairment, or any other structures of difference; class, gender, race, religion, and sexuality – this presents an a posteriori impediment to participation and consequently, justice. Moreover, it establishes a socio-political basis in which the "constructions of brains, bodies, and environments revolve around the prosocial, around compliance with the wills of the body politic."(Yergeau, 2018: 105), further serving to exclude any potential scope for the role of care in the public sphere (Ibid: 136), rendering the possibility of an autism-friendly city severely limited ex-ante.

In the following section, the view that ‘reciprocity in accordance with proportion, not equality’ (Aristotle. Nic. Ethics V.5, 1132b) continues to characterise even modern towns and cities will be utilised to explore current efforts to establish autism-friendly cities; in both Glasgow - through its strategic documents - and Clonakilty, the first official autismfriendly town in the Republic of Ireland.

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Autism Friendly City In 2018 Clonakilty (County Cork), became the first ‘Autism-friendly town’ in Ireland.

Beginning years earlier with the efforts of the local ‘Supervalu’ supermarket, and resulting in an accreditation awarded to the town by ‘AsIAm’, a national autism charity and advocacy organisation (Hutton, 2019). In order to receive the designation, various stakeholders within the town had to participate within the broader accreditation process which saw the training and engagement of; half of all public services and schools, a quarter of local voluntary and business organisations, as well as half of its healthcare professionals, and engaging a minimum of a quarter of the towns wider population, in addition to the establishment of a three-year strategy for improving autism friendliness within the town. (Clonakilty - Autism Friendly Town, n.d.)

As a result, over two hundred participating organisations in the town have become accredited ‘Autism Friendly Champions’ to the extent that they have engaged in autismfriendly staff training, and provided various resources including; social stories, quiet spaces, sensory activities, and have committed to engaging with the ‘Autism Friendly Town Committee’ in order to aid in the realisation of the autism-friendly town plan (Ibid).

The three-year town plan itself proposes a framework that aims to ‘Improve awareness of autism with a view to greater acceptance of autism amongst the general public’ (ref). The plan offers recommendations across; the built landscape, public awareness, healthcare and public services, education, employment, retail, and hospitality (Ibid).

The broad principles of the town plan to increase awareness, and improve ease of access and inclusion for the ‘autistic community’ in the town are similarly reflected in the Scottish Strategy for Autism. Initially setting out 26 recommendations as part of a broader comprehensive vision for 2021 in which autistic people are ‘respected, accepted and valued by their communities’, and are able to trust that they will be able to access local services in ways that will treat them fairly, such that they will be able to lead ‘meaningful and satisfying lives’ (Scottish Government, 2018: 4).

Since the Scottish strategy was initially published (2011), it has focused on an improvement to services and access through the development of guides to help autistic individuals and their families identify advice and support (Ibid). Alongside the investment of £35,000 per local authority in order for them to develop ‘local autism strategies’ and ‘action plans’ (Ibid). In addition to a £4.5m investment toward ‘Autism Development Funds’ which are intended to incentivise national and local efforts to initiate projects which expand delivery and access to local autism-related services.

(Ibid) The strategy was reframed in 2015 toward an ‘outcomes approach’ which seeks to produce key outcomes including; a healthy life, choice and control, independence, and active citizenship (Ibid).

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Fig.2 - ‘Supervalu’, Clonakilty

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The various interventions proposed across Irelands first autism-friendly town and the Scottish Strategy documents represent significant progress, insofar as they appear to reflect an awareness of social models of autism. In which the onus for establishing a degree of autism friendliness is placed on the environment – including the social environment, extending to the attitudes and perceptions of others – and its inability to accommodate the needs of autistic people implicated as one of the primary disabling factors (Fletcher-Watson and Happé, 2019: 22). Similarly, the provision of intermediary sensory or quiet spaces arguably reflects the post-social model which subtly shifts the focus from the environment directly, toward the relationship and interactions between the individual and the environment (Ibid).

Where this project believes these approaches to be lacking, however, is in the social (and post-social) model of disabilities failure to account for issues of cultural representation (Shakespeare, 1994). This view stems from an interpretation of oppression which posits a ‘conceptual spectrum’ between ‘two distinct poles of injustice for social collectivities’ (Gleeson, 1999: 131). At one end; ‘distributive injustices sourced in the political economy’ which consequently require ‘redistributive remedies’, in opposition to ‘the injustice of cultural misrecognition (…) ultimately traceable to the cultural-valuational structure’ which can only be resolved via the reassessment or modification of cultural norms and practices (Ibid).

From this perspective, we can apprehend the admittedly vital, though modest, interventions which would allow autistic people to participate in the social infrastructures of leisure and retail via the provision of enabling devices (sensory activities, or quiet spaces), as akin to a form of ‘redistributive remedy’. Which would tacitly suggest their absence has stemmed from forms of injustice ‘sourced in the political economy’ (Ibid). The interventions and solutions forming the basis upon which these autism-friendly towns and cities would be created also omit critical considerations that arise from a contractual view of the polis — further obfuscating the ‘authoritative constructions of cultural and political norms’ which are additionally ‘institutionalised in the state, civil society, and economy’ (Ibid: 134-135).

The two-fold claim that; efforts to establish autism-friendly environments have emerged from a polar misreading of the socio-political and spatial injustices faced by autistic people. Further, that these injustices occur as a direct result of the social contracts that underpin the establishment of cities generally is equally applicable to the broad outcomes-based approach embedded within the Scottish Strategy for Autism as it is to the strategies that have been employed in Clonakilty. Insofar as both have pursued a ‘redistributive’ approach; to the extent that each focus overwhelmingly on the provision of, and access to, services - this perpetuates rather than emancipates an engrained material dependence; in addition to an equivalence of disability with dependency, which is further subtextually framed within the context of ‘humane care’ for those who require access to those services (Ibid). An approach which necessarily overlooks the impact of cultural devaluation as a critical factor in the ‘impoverishment experienced by disabled people’ (Ibid: 134).

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5 6 7 18 3

Autism Aware Locations: Glasgow City Centre 2. Riverside Museum 3. Glasgow Science Centre 4. Hallmark Hotel 5. Centre for Contemporary Art 6. Ibis Hotel (Sauchiehall St.) 7. Novotel 8. Glasgow Film Theatre 9. Malones Bar / Restaurant 10. Glasgow Taxi's (Gordon St. Rank) 11. The Lighthouse 12. House of Fraser 13. St. Enoch Centre 14. Gallery of Modern Art 15. Buchanan Galleries 16. Glasgow City Chambers 17. St. Mungo Museum of Religious Life & Art 18. Scottish Event Campus 20. Hunteruan Museum NB: 1. Glasgow Airport & 19. Scottish Football Association beyond map extents.

Fig.3 - Map of Autism Friendly Locations within Glasgow.

Reproduced from Glasgow City Centre Strategy, Glasgow City Council 2020

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8 9

15 17

10 11

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12 13

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This ‘redistributive’ model necessarily becomes the only viable approach when framed within the context of cities underpinned by social cooperation for ‘mutual benefit’. When an individual is ‘disqualified from citizenship in a deeper way (…) because they do not conform to the moral rationality that is used to define the citizen’ (Nussbaum, 2007: 135), or are otherwise unable to enact a bios politikos. The reconciliation of mutual benefit with the bare life of the excluded individual - in the absence of alternative means and methods to conceptualise cases of ‘extreme dependency’ (Ibid: 136) - inevitably results in a ‘regime of humane care’ or guardianship.

This manifestation of an autism-friendly city then amounts to a proposition in which ‘we live together and take care of our dependents’ (Ibid: 137-138) — demarcating the dependents as distinctly separate from the “we” or “our” and consequently as ‘not fully equal subjects of political justice.’ (Ibid). Instead, the needs and requirements of disabled or impaired people are recognised only to the extent that a subset of the predominant “we” views this as a moral obligation and ‘not because they are citizens with rights, equal ends in themselves’ (Ibid).

In view of this criticism, the central questions then become a matter of ascertaining; Whether ‘guardianship is an adequate way to imagine the citizenship of people with impairments and disabilities’ (Ibid) in the context of an autism-friendly city, whether there are alternative principles for the provision of autism-friendly cities that might better address the ‘injustice of cultural misrecognition’ via the mediation of ‘cultural revaluations’ (Gleeson, 1999: 131). In addition to the extent that this framework may begin to influence ‘the institutions that affect ‘all citizens’ life chances pervasively and from the start’ (Nussbaum, 2007: 139).

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Fig.4 - Fragment of a 'Stimming' Pavilion

Neurodiverse City

“When a utopia is designed as a realistic alternative, it is intended not as a society to be achieved in all its detail, but as a vehicle for presenting an alternative to the present. In this sense, a utopia is a mirror to the present designed to bring out flaws, a circus or funfair mirror in reverse, to illustrate ways in which life could be better, not necessarily the specific ways in which life should be made better.� (Sargent, 2010: 129)

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Neurodiversity Of the various schemas for interpreting and framing autism; including spectrums, and constellations, one of the more recent and – in light of the preceding discussion surrounding political agency, citizenship, and justice – critical frameworks can be found in the conception of neurodiversity. The neurodiversity perspective is situated in stark opposition to the earlier models discussed, which characterise autism as a disorder or disability. Well exemplified in the tension between those who stress the need for (arguably normative) rehabilitative intervention, typically the 'non-autistic parents of autistic children' (Fletcher-Watson and HappÊ, 2019: 21) and those that primarily focus 'acceptance and rights', an effort primarily composed of autistic adults (ibid).

The neurodiversity movement encapsulates the wider variety of 'hidden disabilities', characterised by their lack of 'obvious physical features', otherwise understood as the variety of conditions which psychologists refer to as neurodevelopmental disorders; Autism, ADHD, Epilepsy, Tourette's syndrome, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia (Ibid: 23).

The Neurodiverse perspective primarily aims at decoupling these conditions from connotative terms including disorder, and toward disseminating an understanding that natural variability in brain structure and function, giving rise to cognitive processes, accounts for the 'differences between all individuals' including those cases of neurodivergence which precipitate diagnostic categories (ibid). Critically, this position emphasises that where a neurodivergent persons' lived experience of the world, or social interaction differs from the mainstream, this makes them 'different, not less' (ibid).

The position is well summarised by Jim Sinclair (1993) in describing autism as 'a way of being' insofar as: 'it is pervasive; it colors every experience, every sensation, perception, thought, emotion, and encounter, every aspect of existence. It is not possible to separate the autism from the person.'

As alluded to previously, however, this perspective is not without criticism. A common concern is that an exclusive focus on rights and recognition serves to undermine the not insignificant challenges and need for support encountered by autistic people, as well as their families and carers (Ibid: 147), especially as this pertains to those with co-occurring conditions including epilepsy, learning or intellectual disabilities, further language impairments, or otherwise limited speech (Ibid: 23). An additional concern remains that the wholesale endorsement of a neurodiverse perspective toward autism will effectively displace the difficulties faced by those with co-occurring conditions, entirely toward those additional conditions without further seeking to understand the role autism itself may be imposing (Ibid: 147).

This project, therefore, adopts a largely supportive but ambivalent stance toward this perspective. Insofar as it provides a necessary antithetical framework with which to challenge constructs embedded within notions of political-justice, citizenship, and the production of the public sphere, which this essay contends, manifest the spatial injustices that further inhibit the formation of genuinely autism-friendly cities. As such, the counter-propositions which form this project embrace the essence of neurodiversity

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- to the extent that this aims to 'provide relief in areas of need but not to eliminate an individual's neurodivergent status' or undermine the still significant challenges faced by autistic people and their families (ibid).

Exacerbates or Ameliorates

Core Differences

Biology

Underlies

Cognition

Changes

Shapes

Behaviour

Observable Features

Fig.5 - 'Four Level Framework for Understanding Neurodevelopment' reproduced from Fletcher-Watson and HappĂŠ, 2019: 145

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Influences

Society

Perceptions + Judgements

A Neurodiverse City Where the neurodiversity movement has sought to redress the oppressed experiences of autistic, or otherwise, neurologically diverse people through the provision of an interpretive framework, this essay maintains that the Autism Friendly city; in both its conception and redistributive implementation, has ineffectively translated these shared aspirations into urban form. In an extension of this critique, this project is concerned with the elaboration of an alternative means for considering the autism-friendly city; beginning instead, from a neurodiverse perspective, necessarily relocating its broader socio-political currents in the domains of material expression and material culture. In order to do so - while aiming to highlight and further subvert the constraining logics that have produced Autism Friendly cities - the Neurodiverse city instead takes the form of a counterfactual or ‘what-if’. Insofar as it perceives cultural valuations and the politics, beliefs, and attitudes they produce as a more impactful sphere for design speculations.

Prior to the collapse of a social imagination in design, which sought to present critical, provocative ideas, culminating in a highpoint throughout the 1960s and 1970’s (Dunne and Raby, 2013: 6) this perspective was more widely practised. Despite this, various design disciplines have continued to engage in the production of fictions; in the form of potential users and uses, and have maintained a critical perspective to the extent that shortcomings are identified in order to offer iterative improvement (Ibid: 35). However, this processes’ previously social orientation eventually becoming ‘economically unviable, and therefore irrelevant’ (Ibid: 8) through its absorption by the dawning neoliberal epoch of the Thatcher-Reagan era, hastened its entanglement with the concerns of industry and a frenzied-commercialisation to the extent that it is now unable to ‘dream its own dreams, let alone social ones’ (Ibid: 88).

In opposition to this decline, entire overlapping and interconnecting perspectives have since appeared; speculative design, critical design, design fictions, futurescaping, among others (Ibid: 11). Each of which to differing extents emphasises a reorientation of design from a shortsighted focus on the present, toward the many possible futures that may manifest (Ibid: 69). In positioning their concerns at a distance from the necessary feasibility of market-led solutions, a renewed possibility for design to confront ethical, political, social, and systemic issues emerges (ibid: 12). As such, these perspectives, held in a dialectical tension between the real and functional fictions (Ibid: 57), innately lend themselves toward a capacity for generating alternatives and in the navigation of new values that result from the consideration of wider socio-political issues (Ibid: 44).

Concerning the practice of design itself, these frameworks also provide scope to engage in a broader methodological perspective already common to other fields; narrative construction and worldbuilding in literature (Ibid: 71), the use diegetic prototypes – props within the world or diegesis of a film which reinforce the worlds verisimilitude and immersion (Kirby, 2011: 195) in cinema – as well as the varying shades of reality often utilised for model purposes across philosophy and the social and political sciences (Ibid: 70).

The degree to which these perspectives can be regarded as a more than mere fantasy, necessarily depend upon the extent to which we are readily able to admit that we ‘live within a multitude of realities’ (Ibid: 159), and subsequently in the capacity for design

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and material cultures to ‘subvert spectacle for public good and progressive politics’ (Ibid).

By varying degrees, these attitudes, for many, may resonate in parallel with conceptions of utopia and with it the worst of the twentieth century. However, if the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War signified the ‘end of utopias’ (Sargent, 2010: 119), they also signified an end to ‘the possibility of other ways of being and alternative models for society’ (DR 8). Just as a form of guardianship becomes the only way to conceive of the citizenship of “our” dependents, we become conditioned by our present state toward a complacent acceptance of its immutability, leaving us unsuitable to establish a more comprehensive cognisance of our given location (Sargent, 2010: 129). However, engaging in the speculation or imagining of other modes of life, as opposed to utilising (mis)applications of power in order to bring them to fruition, allow for a more thorough examination of uncritically inherited ideologies without having to become impossibly extricated from them (Ibid: 140).

The proposition of a Neurodiverse city, therefore, aims to contest the given states from which it is generated, ‘it is a form of dissent expressed through alternative design proposals’ (DR: 160), aiming to disconcert the present, rather than predict or prescribe a future. By looking toward; the possible, or plausible, as opposed to the probable, it seeks to re-evaluate entrenched historico-political perspectives which systematically limit claims to the possibility of social change (Ibid: 161).

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POSSIBLE

PLAUSIBLE PREFERABLE PRESENT

PROBABLE

Fig.6 - 'Types of Futures' Reproduced from Hancock and Bezold, 1994: 25 via Dunne and Raby, 2013: 5

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Conclusion This essay has intended to explore current efforts to establish Autism Friendly cities, in order to develop the critical basis from which the conception of alternatives might be produced. It has further sought to demonstrate that the Autism Friendly city, through particular interpretations of Autism –its characterisation as a dis-ability – considered in tandem with a conception of the city premised on reciprocal exchange for mutual benefit; further perpetuates a segregated service-oriented dependence, rather than emancipates those it aims to support.

From this perspective, Autism Friendly cities are both the result and a simultaneously tacit reinforcement of authoritative constructions of normativity in predominant cultural valuations of autistic or neurodiverse people. Beginning with the premise that participation in, and the parallel creation of the public sphere, necessitates the subordination of one kind of life; the fact of mere existence, to another, a bios politikos.

This essay has intended to highlight the prejudicial pre-conditional constructs of personhood and citizenship that are made manifest in the contemporary material expression of urban infrastructures.

As a counterproposition, this essay asserts that a judicious utilisation of the neurodiversity perspective in the reconceptualisation of; public social infrastructures, and more crucially, in the way notions of citizenship prefigure a right to these resources are conceived, can better form the foundation upon which an emancipatory, friendly city is established.

This assertion necessarily reflects explorations into alternative ways of being at the individual and societal scale through the articulation of design interventions and material cultures. It, therefore, considers the employment of a speculative or critical design outlook as the most conducive to the generation of alternatives capable of reassessing and recontextualising the historico-ethical and political ties that have produced the present.

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List of Figures

Cover Image - Authors own illustration Fig.1 - Authors own illustration Fig.2 - Photograph sourced from Google Street View [Accessed 7 May 2020] Fig.3 - Reproduced from: Glasgow City Centre Strategy, Glasgow City Council 2020 [online] Available at: <https://www.glasgowcitycentrestrategy.com/project/autism-friendly-city-centre> Fig.4 - Authors own illustration Fig.5 - Reproduced from: Fletcher-Watson, S., HappĂŠ, F., 2019. Autism: a new introduction to psychological theory and current debate. Routledge, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxonâ&#x20AC;Ż; New York, NY. p. 145 Fig.6 - Reproduced from: Hancock, Trevor & Bezold, Clement. (1994). Possible futures, preferable futures. The Healthcare Forum journal. 37. 23-9. p.25

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