Inclusive Climate Infrastructure Design Playbook

Inclusive climate infrastructure design is an approach to co-designing physical spaces, services, and systems that anticipate, prepare for, and adapt to changing climate conditions while simultaneously enabling accessibility and equal participation for all people, particularly people with disabilities. Such infrastructure can prevent, absorb, recover from, and adapt to disruptions caused by current and future climate risks while strengthening the resilience capacity of people with disabilities. 

Why do we need inclusive climate infrastructure? 

More than half of the world’s 1.3 billion people with disabilities live in towns and cities. Inaccessible housing, transport, and public spaces, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, increase exposure to climate hazards, interrupt the use of assistive technology, limit access to information and evacuation, and undermine safety, wellbeing, and long-term resilience. At the same time, around 60% of the built environment that will exist by 2050 has yet to be constructed, presenting a critical opportunity to shape infrastructure that is both climate-resilient and inclusive of the needs of people with disabilities through inclusive design. 

What is the Playbook about? 

The Inclusive Climate Infrastructure Design Playbook seeks to serve as a starting point for collaboratively designing and delivering disability-inclusive, climate-resilient infrastructure. Developed through a participatory research process combining a review 

of 50+ global built examples and interviews and participatory workshops with 25+ urban practitioners and people with disabilities, the Playbook identifies actionable principles and recommendations for inclusive climate infrastructure design across three essential built environment sectors: housing, transport, and public spaces.  

We encourage the readers to adapt the guiding principles, foundational actions, and sector-specific recommendations outlined in this Playbook to their local contexts and apply them collaboratively with people with disabilities and other stakeholders to create infrastructure that is accessible, equitable, and resilient. 

This publication was prepared through GDI Hub’s ongoing research at the intersection of inclusive infrastructure, climate change, and assistive technology, under the AT2030 programme funded by the UK International Development. The Playbook will be supplemented with a compendium of case studies.