«Here I need to point out an element of urban strategy." These strategies take many forms when it comes to claiming the right to socializing, to going out in the evening, to spending time with others beyond the four walls of home. But what does eating out actually mean for a person with a disability? A sacred right, a near-yet-impossible dream, an exhausting ordeal, a complex choice rooted in ideas of citizenship and belonging? Or all of it at once? The answers vary, as the pieces in this feature attest.
In a recent essay, Alberto Vanolo — a professor of political and economic geography at the University of Turin and father of Teo — describes his own "urban strategy." He does this in La città autistica (Einaudi 2024), a four-point manifesto proposing a different kind of city from the ones we know: a city open to difference, a playful laboratory for rethinking how we encounter neurodiversity.
Once a week, father and son go out to dinner — a choice that sounds simple but isn't. There are many unknowns. On Teo's side: he might become frustrated or agitated in an unfamiliar setting, start to cry, refuse to sit down, disturb other diners. But the real problem lies outside of Teo, in how his difference will be perceived.
Vanolo is therefore thoughtful about where he chooses to eat. "I find it easier and more relaxing to go to places that are peripheral, marginal, or — using an overused and vague term — 'alternative.' In these spaces (…) the normative gaze is less piercing, the atmosphere is far more tolerant, and we can truly relax. (…) The sense that something is strange registers very low, partly because many customers are themselves people who would be considered 'out of place' in more central, fashionable venues." His choice often falls on a slightly run-down restaurant "where Teo's autism is simply not an issue."
While we try to build this new kind of city that would benefit everyone so much, leaving the house for a person with a disability still demands calculations worthy of a space mission. Why does this social, recreational, and relational experience still hover between utopia, a denied right, and what should simply be a normal part of life?