Planning with autistic adults: experiences of transport, housing and recreation, and the conditions of participation

Purpose Autistic adults navigate transport, housing and recreation daily, yet their first-hand accounts rarely reach the planning processes that shape these domains. This paper aims to examine how autistic adults experience transport, housing and recreation and how the process of involving them in city planning shapes whose voice is heard. It aims to bring autistic adults’ first-hand accounts into planning practice and to contribute evidence on making public participation genuinely inclusive. Design/methodology/approach The study used a qualitative, participatory design with three linked components: a focus group with 19 autistic adults, a design charrette workshop with 10 autistic adults and a campus-based tactical-urbanism field study with 7 autistic adults. The focus group transcript was analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis, organized across the three planning domains. The charrette and field study provided participatory corroboration. Access was mediated by a clinical and community partnership and the analysis attends reflexively to how this shaped data collection. Findings Autistic adults relied heavily on others for mobility, citing a cluster of distinct barriers to independent travel rather than a single cause. Participants framed the built environment as a problem of intelligibility and predictability: unorientable maps, unclear transit information, at least as much as one of sensory overload. Housing was described as conditional, supported by independence rather than full autonomy. Participants valued outdoor recreation and specified concrete design conditions for it while rejecting design features that visibly marked them as different. A planning-led, clinically mediated participatory process was found to reframe participants’ accounts into professional categories, illustrating that including autistic adults does not by itself secure planning with, rather than for, them. Practical implications Planners and policymakers should treat public participation itself as something to be made accessible, using open-ended, participant-led and self-paced formats. Built-environment priorities include legible wayfinding, orienting transit information and continuous pedestrian routes connecting homes to services. Social implications Autistic adults’ needs cut across transport, housing, recreation and services simultaneously; a coordinated, cross-sectoral policy response is required, particularly around the loss of support at the transition to adulthood. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the study is among the first to examine autistic adults’ experiences across transport, housing and recreation together, from their own accounts and from within city planning. Its distinctive contribution is reflexive: an empirical account of how the institutional conditions of participation shape autistic adults’ voice in planning.