Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-Made World

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The feminist city, if it exists at all, is not a destination but a motivation: it is a commitment to a revisable, adaptable city that works for everyone, especially for those who are oppressed and excluded. LK: When you start to untangle that a bit, you start to see how our property legislation regimes, taxation regimes, and family law all interweave with one another to make something like what you just described—two women joining households and raising their children together—really difficult in many places. Yet the city can be a place of great freedom. The anonymity of urban life breeds possibilities easily stifled in a claustrophobic small town or suburban enclave. Education, work, pleasure, politics: the city broadens our horizons and gives us choices our foremothers never had. Despite its hostilities, it remains our best hope for radical change. This is the paradox that drove me to write a book, rather than a grad school essay. Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-Made World takes on fear, motherhood, friendship and activism, as well as the joys and perils of being alone – to show not only where our cities have failed, but to imagine what they could become. 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. KERN: It's getting at two things, really. One is that much of the urban environment around us has been designed by men and to reflect a typical home and work life of a male subject rather than a woman. And of course, even then, kind of a narrow male subject as well. Usually a white, middle-class father, breadwinner, worker, able bodied, heterosexual, and so on. So in that sense, talking about the city as a man-made space is a deliberate kind of provocation to get people to think about the fact that the spaces around us, including those that we ourselves as humans have made, are socially constructed in that they don't just emerge out of some kind of technical code or something like that, but that they reflect the values and norms and even the biases and inequalities that are built into society. So a society that sees women as secondary, that sees women as having their proper place in the home and so on, will build urban environments that reflect those norms.

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. Most urban public transportation systems, for example, are designed to accommodate the typical rush hour commute of a 9-to-5 office worker. What little transit that does exist in the suburbs is designed to carry this commuter in a specific direction at a specific time, a linear trip without detours or multiple stops. And this has worked pretty well for the usual male commuter. Feminist City is an ongoing experiment in living differently, living better, and living more justly in an urban world. KERN: Absolutely. There's nothing that I would imagine as part of a feminist city that is about taking something away from somebody else or limiting another group's access to public spaces, workplaces, and so on. It's about imagining, how do we broaden that access, both in a physical sense in terms of the things that you were talking about, like physical accessibility and the built environment, but also social accessibility, safety, cultural norms, all of these different things that contribute to a person or a group's sense of being included as being part of the city, as belonging to the city.

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The UK is soon to get its first ever feminist city, but what exactly is that and how does a city become feminist? The Academy of Urbanism Young Urbanists hosted an event on 15th September looking at the feminist city. Young Urbanist Kirsty Watt, organiser and chair, reflects on the findings of the discussion in relation to her research to date.

She explained that the department looks at gender-differentiated data and provides guidelines as well as training to make sure government services are gender-sensitive and accessible. Over the years, a network of gender experts in key areas has also been set up. Bauer likens the department's cross-sectional role to that of a watchdog making sure all areas of the city's government take gender inequalities into account. "No-one can escape," she said jokingly. "We are like a spiderweb." Observations showed that the pilots were a success. "They worked really well," said Kail. "More girls were using the parks and they were taking up a larger amount of space in them." Now visitors to the city will see that every new or refurbished park in Vienna follows the same principles.There should be more books like this...Feminist City is wide-ranging and sophisticated, brief and engaging. ICON Magazine SG: In relation to your work on the neoliberal cooptation of urban space, I’m wondering whether you know about the social club the Wing or have come across it? This place is not for you’ … a woman walks through an empty car park at a mall in Atlanta, Georgia. Photograph: Elijah Nouvelage/Reuters An] insightful scholarly work … This provocative analysis will resonate with theoretically minded feminists.” Transit issues like out-of-reach subway bars and safety concerns can prevent women from "claiming space in a man-made world." Photo courtesy of Understanding How Women Travel.