A Walk in the Park: Disability and Green Spaces in Victorian Britain
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Pasquino, Serena Irene
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This paper explores the development of accessible green spaces by asylums, hospitals, health resorts, and the government in metropolitan Britain throughout the mid to the late nineteenth century. In addition to revealing how green spaces were implemented into these institutions to be accessible for the physically disabled, this thesis also brings into the foreground of discussion and argues that medical professionals and activists of the latter nineteenth century led a rethinking of the design of urban recreation environments with accessibility as a crucial factor in the development of these spaces. Of particular note here is the recognition of the interplay between green spaces and disability with the central idea of public health allowing for accommodating accessibility in urban development. Along with this paper is a public-facing component which is a mapped walking tour of London featuring green spaces from the nineteenth century which were accessible to disabled visitors and continue to be accessible in the twenty-first century. The goal of the component is to compare accessibility of these spaces from the nineteenth century to the present so as to analyze the history of the disabled community and how they utilized green spaces in London throughout history and how these green spaces are still being used by the disabled today.