Invisible in the City: How to Overcome a Blind Faith in Evi-dence-Based Design That Fails People at the Margins

Abstract: Evidence-based design (EBD) offers a promising model for shaping the built environment and is often promoted as a tool for advancing equity goals. Yet, a blind-faith in the generic takeaways from research underplays the importance of meaningful group differences and disproportionately harms people who are already relegated to the margins: Black Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC), women, LGBTQIA+, and people with disabilities, among others. While it’s reasonable for designers to want confidence in their work, the most effective strategy for good space design is a rigorous and inclusive fact-finding approach that engages the full spectrum of intended users through a variety of methods and adjusts, as needed, to address biases. Ensuring that our research approaches are inclusive and expansive leverages the opportunity of EBD to truly deepen our understanding of the connections between place and people’s well-being. Implications: This piece encourages built environment professionals to employ a conscious, mixed-method research approach to develop a deep and nuanced understanding of the experiences of end users. By highlighting the experiences of marginalized populations, specifically, urban designers, planners, and architects can more precisely accommodate meaningful differences in user needs and preferences, thereby enhancing the ability to shape places that broadly boost peoples’ health, happiness, and well-being.