Earlier today I stumbled across an interesting article in the Georgia Straight (a local Vancouver free newspaper), the article is about women transforming urban spaces. After reading this article I did a bit of extra reading on the Women Transforming Cities International Society, a non-profit organization dedicated to encouraging women’s involvement in municipal politics in order to counteract the current form and structure of urban centers as mostly men have shaped them. In my extra research I also came across an article written by Prabha Khosla “Gendered Cities: Built and Physical Environments.” This article critiques city planning in terms of how its physical planning, provision of social services, and economic development, has failed to understand the intersection of the multiple forces of race, ethnicity, gender, age, sexuality, religion, language, disability, etc. on city residents. The inclusion of the excluded – women – in decision-making and physical planning will create healthy cities for all. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Women Plan Toronto, a unique community based organization that worked tirelessly to demonstrate the gendered nature of the city and to enable women’s involvement and decision making in urban planning. Its work focused on educating planners and councilors about women’s lives in the city, demonstrated how cities could look and be different if women also planned cities, and significantly, lobbied and won the right to bring women’s voices into Toronto’s Official Plans which resulted in changes to planning regulations and guidelines. Women Plan Toronto raised specific concerns regarding the height of curbs, the difficulty of negotiating stairs in public spaces with wheelchairs and strollers, the need for safe, clean, and accessible public spaces, accessibility for mobility in shopping areas, and the need for proper lighting for women’s safety in the streets and in public spaces.
To relate this back to the course, women experience cities differently than men because traditionally they have assumed different roles and responsibilities. Women, in all their diversity, have unique perspectives and insights on how to contribute to effective city planning and decision-making. Using a gender equality lens is a way of looking at the work we do so as to identify ways of supporting the well being of women and men (boys and girls); taking special care to ensure inclusion of the full diversity of women.
This is very cool research! Thanks for sharing!
I’ve done a lot of history papers through a feminist and gender theory lens but never really thought about its applicability to urban planning other then from a disability studies standpoint (ie: how most urban spaces are built with only able bodied individuals in mind and then as an after thought, some improvements are made to make the space ‘more accessible’).
I think it’s a really interesting concept to use the intersectional approach to urban planning as well. So not just in the way that women have been excluded from urban planning practices, but also how (in Canada) indigenous women have been marginalized from different angles than a white woman of a certain social status, for example.
I had the opportunity to work on an accessibility audit project this summer as a student research assistant (well, actually, we’re all still working on it now, as I’ve learned academic projects generally go haha). We did a physical survey of the UBC Okanagan campus and are working on a participatory online mapping project. The project in its conception is intersectional in stemming from critical geography, online interface and computer programming, feminist, gender, and disability studies. This awesome opportunity has really opened my eyes to how inaccessible this campus is to a large majority who don’t fit the standard student profile. From a lack of gender neutral washrooms, designated breast feeding spaces, change tables in men’s washrooms, elevators and exterior ramps, to accessible wheelchair stalls in inaccessible washrooms, or the fact that almost 100% of the technology used by staff and students is sight only (touch screens and smart boards for example). This really changed my perspective because university campuses are usually on the forefront of progressive change – I look at spaces all around me now so differently and wonder how I couldn’t see all these inequalities before.
But I guess that is also something we have discussed a few times in class, how these urban planning practices have become naturalized to the extent we don’t really consider how else we could be inhabiting space. I think your research is really exciting and interesting in looking at the narrow representation of types of individuals that inhabit spaces as a result of urban planning practices having historically come from a narrow perspective. And thank you again for sharing! I can’t believe I never realized the relation between the accessibility audit I’ve been working on and this class before and wish I’d come up with this research idea! Great work and way to keep up the fight for equality in all areas!
I think that this is a really interesting research topic and I think that it is an excellent idea to approach urban planning from a gender studies perspective. I never really thought of urban planning as being polarized by gender until I read what you had to say and to be honest I was a little embarrassed. I realize now just how male dominated much of the urban planning is in our modern world and especially in the recent past. From the exclusion of women totally from discussions of planning to the removal of institutions for woman from the plan itself. I also agree with the previous comment relating to more equality for all rather than just woman and men. For example at the university this year I noticed that all the handicapped washrooms now have a ring and tether to make them easier to open for people in wheelchairs. I think this is great especially with the increasing number of people in wheelchairs on campus but I had to think why hadn’t this been done before. It’s not like the campus has never had students or faculty in wheelchairs and yet this was the year they decided to implement these changes. I wonder what led to the changes and who was the real proponent for them. I feel that this research topic is really interesting and I know that it will produce a great paper. Good luck!
I think this is such interesting information! Thank you for posting about it!
I have never thought about such small things such as the hieght of curbs, and how big of an affect they can have on a functioning city. I can however relate to the idea that if there were more female planners involved, cities would be a lot different. There are many times I wished that streets were lit up better when I was walking to my car at night, even on our campus.
I really liked how you used the phrase “gender equaility lens”. If more planners thought this way I am sure cities would be much, much different. It would be interesting to see how different a city would turn out if it had been influenced moreso by a woman, rather then the all male group that did most of the city planning back in the 1700s. Overall, I think this is great research and a very interesting topic, that brought up a lot of concerns and issues that I have never thought about before! Thanks:)
Thanks for the feedback guys, I’m noticing now I completely forgot to link the article. Well here it is… http://www.straight.com/article-834951/vancouver/equity-lens-applied-cities
Also after doing some extra research into this I sure wish I was researching this topic for my final paper. But I guess it’s a little to late to change my topic now.