Healthy Cities are Gender Equal Cities

GENDER IN URBAN CONTEXTS

  Healthy cities by definition strive to create social and physical environments which empower people to mutually support each other in both getting on with daily life and reaching their maximum potential^[1]. Involvement and inclusion are key to physically and mentally healthy populations. As such, equality of design is a crucial element of a healthy city.

However, city design is not gender neutral. In a world where the needs of a stereotype working man is still almost always the default, over half of the population are often excluded. Different users of the city - women and men, girls and boys - use and experience the landscape differently. However, city design rarely considers these differences. Security, for example, is central to a woman’s experience of the city. Most women, when faced with a dark alley that shaves 20 minutes off their journey home, will take the longer, better lit detour. Isolated areas of a city and poorly lit streets contribute to discomfort in urban public spaces, often making women avoid certain streets, neighbourhoods or parks after dark.

Mobility patterns are also influenced by gender roles. Women, who do 75% of the world’s unpaid care work, generally make multi-stop trips throughout the day in order to cover household needs^[2]. There are many people (women, but also men and grandparents) who make multiple stops throughout the day: think dropping off your son at nursery, taking your daughter to school, swinging by the pharmacy for medicine and the supermarket for groceries, before heading to the office for your part-time job. Unless you live in a very dense mixed-use neighbourhood, this kind of morning requires multiple trips through adjacent areas. Although transport users are more likely to be female, public transport design does not consider this kind of navigation, instead, it serves commuters, whisking office workers from suburb to centre at peak times.

Gender planning as defined by the European Commission is “an active approach to planning which takes gender as a key variable or criterion and which seeks to incorporate an explicit gender dimension into policy or action”^[3]. In 1995 at the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, gender mainstreaming was recognized as the methodology to be used to incorporate a gender perspective into policies and institutions^[4]. In the following year, the European Commission committed to mainstream gender into to all policies and address all gender inequalities^[5].

Since then, several European cities have begun including gender analysis in their planning, policies and actions. The city of Umeå in Sweden is designing with inclusion through exclusion (girls-only co-creation). Barcelona recently published a guide setting out gender criteria for technical teams involved in planning, drafting and executing projects in the city.  Vienna has also been increasingly shaped by women, prioritizing pedestrians over car users and systematically including more female perspectives when designing public spaces and housing since 1992.

To become healthy places to live, cities should always take gender into account in their designs, which is best achieved by actively including more women in the design process. Think wider pavements for new mothers/fathers or people with shopping bags. Better walking routes and public transport options connecting schools, local markets and after school activities. Spaces where girls would enjoy socialising, be safe and feel encouraged to do sports or exercise. Well-lit streets and open parks with long distance visibility and the eyes of local businesses, neighbours and passersby on them. These often-mentioned ideas are easily overlooked in designs where the teams are not aware of gender implications. The result is public spaces which discourage women and girls from participating in public life and their local communities. Just a few small adjustments from considering gender more frequently in planning and design can make the world of difference, building inclusive public spaces that are the bedrock of healthy communities.