Session Guide

FRI-A10: The Available Landscape: Designing Beyond the Normative Cityscape Toward an Inclusive Future

Friday, October 10, 2025

8:30 AM - 9:45 AM CT

Location: New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, Center Stage-Room 343-345

Sponsored By

1.25 PDH, LA CES/HSW, AICP, NY/HSW, FL

Speaker(s)

David A. Rubin, FASLA (he/him/his)

Founding Principal
DAVID RUBIN Land Collective
PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania
Magda Mostafa, PhD (she/her/hers)

Founding Partner and Managing Director
StudioTM and the American University in Cairo
New York, New York
Hansel Bauman (he/him/his)

Human-centered Design Specialist
Hansel Bauman architecture + planning
Washington DC, District of Columbia

Despite best efforts, our cities remain islands of accessibility within a sea of inaccessibility. Landscape architects are uniquely positioned to foster this requisite connective tissue of availability. Reflecting the return on investment for inclusive design, this session focuses on deaf and neurodivergent citizenry as lenses for resilient societal expression.

Learning Outcomes:

Understand and appreciate the breadth of citizenry in public spaces through “availability” and the equally important needs of the broader community to participate in the design of public spaces.
Correlate and value the lived experience and the expertise of the community beyond “typical” to ensure the public space is available to all, not just those within the statistical center.
Understand the notion of accessibility by expanding the glossary of inclusion to include “availability.” Understand that this allows for a gradient of experiences beyond the “othering” and binary notions of accessibility
Learn actionable strategies for creating available spaces through the lenses of deaf and neurodivergent expertise, as illustrated through tangible case studies of ASPECTSS and DeafSpace.