A c c e s s i b i l i t y a n d S o c i a l S u s t a i n a b i l i t y
109
ACCESSIBILITY AND SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY:
ASSESSMENT METHODS FOR ITALIAN UNIVERSITIES
Valentina Giacometti
1
1
PhD Student, Graduate School in Civil and Architectural Engineering, DICAr, University of Pavia
Abstract
Defining the concept of Sustainability as a continuous process that identifies in the
Environment, Economy and Society three basic and unbreakable dimensions of human
and territorial development, it can be stated that with the term “Social Sustainability” is
identified the ability of environment and society to ensure the human welfare conditions
(safety, health and education) equally shared by class and gender (Khan 1995). The
values of Equity, Empowerment, Accessibility, Participation, Cultural Identity and
Institutional Stability, which form the key principles of the Social Sustainability, are social
variables to be read in parallel and closely linked to each other.
Regarding this particular occasion we want to deepen the concept of Accessibility, which
in the Italian legislation is defined as "the opportunity even for people with reduced or
impaired motor or sensory capabilities to reach the building and its specific property and
environmental units, to enter easily and to use spaces and facilities under conditions of
appropriate safety and autonomy" (D.M. 236/89), as a necessary and essential condition
to guarantee the Social Sustainability.
Today an important issue for the society is represented by the possibility to ensure the
widest number of people, including in this way even people with disabilities (physical,
sensorial and mental), the cultural and environmental conditions to achieve the full
participation and active inclusion within the society.
The research presented here focuses specifically on the analysis of the accessibility of
the Italian universities, first of all because Social Sustainability also means to ensure
everyone the same opportunities of education and socio-cultural involvement, and then
because the national university system represents one of the main engines able to
enhance and increase the cultural tourism in the whole Country.
Keywords:
Accessibility, Social Sustainability, Heritage, University System.
Introduction
When Herman Hertzberger defines the Accessibility as the "possibility of being able to
enter a space more or less public, more or less private, more or less open, more or less
closed" (Hertzberger 1996), for the first time we speak about accessibility in a structured
way as a principle that affects the user in the process of the space appropriation. Within
the social relations, the accessibility results connected to the relationship between
opening/closing of the society towards individuals and the interactions between them
and the environment.
In Italy, from a normative point of view, the accessibility and the architectural and
sensorial barriers overcoming are regulated by a very specific legislative framework. If
we compare the legislation temporal evolution in the last 40 years in the national context
and in the European one, we can see that the Italian legislation follows the conceptual
change steps dictated from Europe, clearly marked by the assemblies WHO (World
Health Organization) in the 1980 and 2001 (Fig.1).
The concept of Handicap as a physical impairments (before 1980) changes into the idea
of motor and sensory disability as a linear result of the disease (after 1980), until
reaching the complex bio-psycho-social approach that combines the disability with
environmental and territorial contextual factors (after 2001).
