Urban green spaces have been increasingly evidenced to not only improve human health (both body and mind) and well-being but also promote a sustainable way of living for citizens as well as cities. These positive health and sustainable advantages have even greater impacts when applied to people with disabilities, which can ultimately evaluate their quality of life in the long run. Unfortunately, people with disabilities receive less attention and tend to be disregarded in terms of equal access to public facilities, health-related services, and opportunities in society. Therefore, this article emphasizes the value of having green spaces within cities and acknowledges how people with disabilities gain the benefits through active and passive methods as well as direct and indirect means at the global, population, and individual levels. With that, this article argues that urban green spaces or the development of sustainable urbanism must prioritize and include people with disabilities in the planning process, as this inclusive population has the greatest potential for advancing public resources (e.g., environmentally, socially, and economically) and moving cities closer to being truly sustainable.

Public parks are vital for community well-being, yet often fail to cater to the needs of people with disabilities, restricting their safe and independent use. This paper details a pragmatic study aimed at crafting the design for an inclusive park on the outskirts of Bangkok, addressing these limitations. Through a comprehensive mixed-methods approach—encompassing literature reviews, semi-structured interviews, and surveys with stakeholders, including individuals with disabilities—this research gathered diverse perspectives on inclusive design. Participants underscored the importance of social and recreational activities in universally accessible spaces, providing valuable spatial insights. This research aims to employ pragmatic research methods to develop the design of an inclusive park for people with disabilities at the Thammasat University Rangsit Campus Water Sport Center. This study seeks to integrate the perspectives and needs of people with disabilities into the park design, ensuring that the space is accessible and meets a wide range of needs. The research aims to bridge socio-environmental considerations with practical design applications, creating a model that can serve as a template for similar developments in other urban settings. This study’s findings informed the creation of a design that harmoniously integrates green spaces with the specific requirements of disabled users, promoting inclusivity and accessibility within the fast-growing urban areas of Southeast Asia. This research not only offers a template for addressing the gaps in public space provision for people with disabilities but also illustrates how designers can interpret and meet socio-environmental and health-related needs through inclusive planning. It extends the discussion on overcoming WHO-identified inequalities in urban settings and lays the groundwork for interdisciplinary studies aimed at enriching the fabric of urban life through research processes and scientific inquiry. This paper asserts the pivotal role of inclusive design in enhancing urban livability, advocating for a design methodology that responds to the nuanced demands of inclusivity, thereby contributing to the broader discourse on equality, accessibility, and the right to the city for people with disabilities.

This study aims to critically assesses the application and limitations of Universal Design (UD) and Inclusive Design (ID) in Bangkok’s public parks and proposes a context-sensitive framework to enhance urban inclusivity. While UD has contributed significantly to improving physical accessibility—through standardized features such as ramps, tactile paving, and clear circulation paths—it often fails to address emotional comfort, cultural representation, and participatory engagement. In contrast, ID emphasizes co-creation, contextual adaptability, and symbolic inclusion, offering a more holistic and equity-driven approach. Using a five-dimensional comparative framework—philosophy, function, spatial logic, user engagement, and evaluation—this research analyzes three major public parks: Benjakitti Forest Park, Chatuchak (Railway) Park, and Chulalongkorn Centenary Park. Each site was evaluated through narrative critique, dimension scoring, and radar diagram visualizations. The findings reveal that while all three parks exhibit strong UD characteristics, they lack alignment with ID principles, particularly in the areas of community engagement and emotional resonance. These typologies highlight a broader trend in Thai public space planning, wherein accessibility is interpreted narrowly as compliance rather than inclusion. The study concludes by proposing policy and design recommendations for embedding ID into future park development, positioning ID not only as a design approach but as a paradigm for spatial justice, belonging, and cultural sustainability.

Residential interior design for people with special needs necessitates more specific research, especially with respect to physical abilities. Previous studies, as opposed to general people, have overlooked the nuanced requirements generated by age, gender, and living environment differences. This study aims to examine physical abilities across different ages, genders, and residencies and identify relationships between in-home mobility and physical abilities among people with special needs. A total of 384 participants (eight different types of disabilities) completed electronic questionnaires. Among young, adult, and older groups, physical abilities and self-support showed statistical differences. Males demonstrated higher physical ability levels but decreased hand–arm movements than females. Greater physical abilities and subjective health were found in urban residents compared to non-urban residents. Additionally, in-home mobility was positively associated with out-of-home mobility, physical abilities, independence, and subjective health (all p values < 0.05). Thus, physical abilities revealed disparities across ages, genders, and resident settings. Also, the greater the mobility inside the house, the more possibilities there are to enhance physical abilities both inside and outside the house, independence, and subjective health. Design recommendations are provided regarding layout, furniture, flooring, and lighting. The consideration of these specific requirements in residential interior design is encouraged.

The problem of the lack of inclusive public space in the fringes of Bangkok, Thailand, is related to multiple factors in urban development. The study-area of the Pathum Thani province offers a summary of the critical consequences of the urban development in the past decades. The partial transformation of some environmental tracks onto an urbanized system allows the creation of a nonhomogeneous privatized continuous built surface. The conditions of these urban areas suffer from vehicular traffic, car dependency, absence of differentiated mobility, limited walkability, and lack of public spaces. The research aims to bring these areas to a higher level of inclusion, accessibility and overall quality by rethinking the existent public spaces, creating the grounds for the design of inclusive and accessible park. To reach this objective, the study explores the topics of public space, park, accessibility and inclusivity for disabilities to establish some principles for future design approach for Thaklong–Klongluang, a study-area located in the Pathum Thani Province. Characteristics, features, weaknesses and existing parks of the study area are demonstrated in the subsequent section. The results’ discussion relates all the aforementioned topics, defining the guidelines for the creation of inclusive and accessible parks in the six existent sites of the study area. Because of its premises, besides being based in a specific location, the article aims to be a valid reference for the areas which present similar features and critical points.

Public parks are a community resource with an important role in improving liveability, physical, and mental wellbeing. However, exercise facilities that are suitable for people with disabilities typically have been neglected in public park design. As such, people with disabilities often are unable to independently or safely use the park. To address this shortcoming, the objective of this paper was to employ a pragmatic research through designing process in developing the design for an inclusive park. We used a mixed-methods approach in the research that included review of previous studies, semi-structured interviews, and questionnaire surveys with stakeholders were applied as design integration. Persons with disabilities specifically were consulted to express their views on all matters of inclusive park design.