Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-Made World

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Rape myths, though, are rooted in deeper systems than the physical environment. The question is, what can cities do differently to support women’s independence, equality, and empowerment? Safe and affordable public transit and housing, eliminating the gendered and racialized wage gap, and universal child care would be great places to start. Stairs, revolving doors, turnstiles, no space for strollers, broken elevators and escalators, rude comments, glares: I sheepishly realized that until I faced these barriers, I’d rarely considered the experiences of disabled people or seniors who are even more poorly accommodated. It’s almost as though we’re all presumed to want or need no access to work, public space, or city services. Best to remain in our homes and institutions, where we belong. Glasgow] Council notes a gender-neutral approach to city development does not work, that women and people of marginalised genders have diverse needs that are not currently reflected in practice and that an intersectional, inclusive and climate-friendly approach is needed," said Glasgow Green councillor Holly Bruce, who pushed forward the groundbreaking motion in the Scottish city.

Note: This article gives the views of the authors, and not the position of USAPP– American Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.Feminist City is brilliant be There should be more books like this...Feminist City is wide-ranging and sophisticated, brief and engaging. ICON Magazine Imagine walking home; how would you feel if you needed to pass through a dark street or park? How is it to be alone at a bus stop or station? What is it like to change, feed or carry your child if you are a parent in a public space or transport? And I think at the urban level, there's also been some interesting moments where people were saying, "Get outside, socialize outside, make use of outdoor public space, it's safer," and so on. But many of our cities have not really been well set up to encourage that socializing. So some cities took it upon themselves to do things that, again, they'd been dragging their feet on for a long time. They increased bicycle lanes and pedestrian access. They created more space for socializing in urban public space. They limited car traffic. They created opportunities for other sorts of social engagements, whether that's through outdoor dining or outdoor public activities. So I think it's a moment where we could see perhaps some changes in how we use urban public space.

I didn’t know how much I valued that invisibility until it was gone. It didn’t magically reappear after my daughter was born, either. Pregnancy and motherhood made the gendered city visible to me in high definition. I’d rarely been so aware of my embodiment, and the connection between this and my experience of the city became much more visceral. While I’d experienced street harassment and fear, I had little sense of how deep, how systemic, and how geographical it all was. An optimistic, pragmatic book, which points to already extant solutions and looks forward to a more just, joyous urban future. Stephanie Sy-Quia, Tribune

Embedding inclusivity can also be done once a space is designed and built, through posted rules and signage. For example, during the Pride Toronto Festival, rules are posted to ensure Pride creates a safe space for the LGBTQ2+ community. This embeds the city streets with inclusivity and instructs how people should treat each other. KERN: Planners can engage in active listening with communities, really try to do that on-the-ground work of community engagement. They can also think about what an equity lens would mean for their decision-making processes. So when you're thinking about where to put a new transit line or new park or even just a reorganization of a particular space, you can ask yourself: Does this enhance gender equity and other forms of equity? Does it leave it neutral, or might it have negative effects on that? And that can be a guidepost, kind of a compass, for some decision making as well. An optimistic, pragmatic book, which points to already extant solutions and looks forward to a more just, joyous urban future.” My fourth and by no means final suggestion: seek out, listen to and employ diverse groups of city-dwellers in all areas of urban design, planning, policy-making, politics and architecture. The pandemic has shown us that society can be radically re-organised if necessary. Let’s carry that lesson into creating the non-sexist city. Feminist geographers, planners, and anti-violence workers have made substantial, if incomplete, progress toward creating safer, less fearful, cities, from pushing for simple changes to urban architectural features like lighting and walkways, to advocating for an overhaul of the entire field of urban planning.

An intersectional analysis of our urban environments through a combination of personal narrative, theory, and pop culture analysis. Leilah Stone, Metropolis Magazine We live in the city of men. Our public spaces are not designed for female bodies. There is little consideration for women as mothers, workers or carers. The urban streets often are a place of threats rather than community. Gentrification has made the everyday lives of women even more difficult. What would a metropolis for working women look like? A city of friendships beyond Sex and the City. A transit system that accommodates mothers with strollers on the school run. A public space with enough toilets. A place where women can walk without harassment. Having been through ‘Girl Power’and ‘ladette culture’ we now stand on the other side still wondering how we can adapt cities designed by and for men to help – and importantly protect – not only ourselves but everyone else. As much as society is to blame for the ongoing violence against women and girls, we should ask as designers of the built environment in which this violence takes place, could we take some responsibility too?

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SG: One of the things that I write about in my work on Madrid is how immigrant women working as home help enabled the entire Spanish urban boom to take place. But one of the things that’s so interesting about that vocabulary of “the essential worker” is that it strips bare how so much work is not essential: like, we don’t need the hedge funder, but we do need the bus driver and the garbage person, the delivery worker. Visionary, intelligent, and humane, this book offers intersectional insights into the gendered nature of the modern city to promote “living more justly in an urban world”… A timely, thought-provoking study.” I'm not every woman [...] and the whole point of feminist planning is it seeing it through the lens of a woman. When I teach this material… my geography students get really discouraged or really annoyed. They were so hopeful thinking about environmental and design solutions. And then they realize that no amount of lighting is going to abolish the patriarchy. “So, what are the answers?” they sulk…’

Firstly, Kern’s analysis of gentrification in relation to women’s experiences deserves closer attention. Her discussion of gentrification starts with the interesting argument that women can be both the drivers and beneficiaries of gentrification and urban renewal ( Winifred Curran, 2018). By also reflecting on her own experiences in Toronto, Kern adds aspects of motherhood into the discussion of gentrification. Here, the ‘gentrification of parenting’ emerges as a result of ‘intensive mothering’, a process in which the individual mother is held responsible for child-centred, labour-intensive, financially expensive and emotionally absorbing childcare ( Sharon Hays, 1996), and the ‘mystique of motherhood’, a view that glorifies motherhood as the ultimate achievement of women ( Andrea O’Reilly, 2010). These analyses reveal an intersectional understanding of how urban renewal processes prioritise ‘particular product brands, styles, and kinds of activities’ (40) and reinforce intersectional inequalities while excluding working-class families and mothers from gentrified urban environments. Second, except for a few points that emerge at the end of the chapters, the author does not provide concrete and comprehensive answers to ‘women’s questions’ as the provision and interpretation of ‘alternative visions’ are largely left to the reader. On the one hand, as Kern suggests, it is essential to recognise the diversity of issues when it comes to intersectional inequalities. This makes it unrealistic to apply one single solution or to have an overarching ‘master’ plan where there are ‘endless options’ (176). On the other hand, more examples are needed, both from the Global North and South, to point out new possibilities for overcoming these inequalities. I argue that using existing examples, strategies and interventions that have the potential to be more widely applied would pave the way for a better understanding of how new possibilities might be realised in different urban environments and contexts. Third, the feminist city is messy and it is alive! It demands a new engagement with its materialities and ecologies. This requires rethinking the relationship with materials and how we care for them. Care is however not a neutral term, not something that can be dispensed at will and that depends on complex material histories. In cities, those histories of care may have allowed for the sedimentation of inequalities and structures of oppression in complex material arrangements of infrastructures and patterns of resource use. A feminist city would put such arrangements into question. Scholars of feminist urbanism argue that men have historically been in charge of designing the cities we live in, and they did so thinking of their own needs and habits, often overlooking or sidelining issues of safety and accessibility affecting women and sexual and gender minorities. First, intersectionality theory has helped her to refine her understanding of the operation of the matrix of oppression in urban lives, and how it shapes the possibilities for coproduction and social learning. Under an intersectionality lens the community is no longer either a mystical pastoral dream or a locus of oppression, but rather, it is a dynamic form of association where forms of solidarity coexist with forms of control and coercion. Rather than looking for an ideal, untouched, purified form of community we need to understand its operation in practice, and the opportunities it offers to redefine urban environments. Intersectionality enables new diagnoses of how inequalities are embodied in the urban environment.LK: That’s a great question. In the book, I talk about how a feminist city can’t rely on the police as a source of protection because there is just too much harm that comes from policing. I wish I had stated even more forcefully an abolitionist vision, which was implicit in my own mind; but now I feel that I really need to be clear about this.