The noise of overlapping conversations, the flashing lights of a billboard, hurried footsteps on the sidewalk, and the constant hammering of a nearby construction site: public spaces are sometimes experienced as environments where stimuli accumulate and often overwhelm us. Each person perceives and responds to these sensory inputs differently, and recognizing neurodiversity means understanding that some individuals require more time to adapt, slower-paced journeys, or more gradual interactions with their surroundings. These encounters raise fundamental questions about contemporary public space: how can it accommodate the diversity of ways people perceive and inhabit it? How can we envision it as a space that embraces all ways of experiencing it?
To establish a point of reference, it is essential to note that the concept of neurodiversity emerged in the 1990s, marking a shift away from views centered on deficit or pathology toward a framework that acknowledges diverse ways of thinking and experiencing the world. This perspective challenged the assumptions under which most built spaces are conceived, generally designed around an "average user" whose responses are assumed to be linear and predictable.
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