The step-free world - can it have a downside?
Changing the built environment to allow step-free access - an exercise which is costing a huge amount of money, and if you consider London's tube network, has really only just begun - is a good thing. I have pushed buggies and I still push a wheelchair from time to time, and the world has got better over the last few decades for the millions of us who do this. But the move to Flatworld is not without a downside, and this doesn't seem to be discussed much. Making the world safe for wheelchairs and buggies has also made the pavements safe for tourists with luggage on wheels that is too heavy to lift; for badly controlled infants on scooters and badly behaved adults on roller blades (and bicycles); and, in a further contribution to the continuing atrophying of human muscle power, for the Segway. Anything that had George W Bush as a famous early adopter needs to be looked at with suspicion. Here at Port Soller in Mallorca, for example, a huge sum of public money has been spent in ...