Planning with an Intersectional Lens: Women-friendly City Design

When we think "city planning" and "urban design", we don't always think of those who are made invisible in the process. Jane Jacobs, out of all the well- known 20th century contributors to contemporary urban theory, drew closest to understanding gender mainstreaming in cities. She conceived a number of simple solutions to tackle the issue of women's safety and wellbeing, promoting a particular kind of mixed use community with design aspects catered toward community cohesion. Nonetheless, ask any working mother, female student, night shift sex worker how the configuration of the urban landscape in many cities affects their mobility, feelings of safety, and economic opportunity, and a number of concerns will arise. With little exception, our urban landscape neglects the needs of women by missing a number of considerations. Although innumerable cases could be listed, I will explore a few such scenarios:

1. Mothers working at night 

Women, especially single mothers, who work at night have few support options to take care of children. In some professions, such as nursing, women often must take night shifts for the advancement of their careers. Other times, women must work at restaurants, bars, and drive-thrus to earn sufficient wages to support themselves and their children. However, the lack of 24/7 childcare in urban areas signals that this need has not yet been raised by institutions.

2. Young women at college campuses 

Young women have at some point felt the fear of walking on their campuses at night. Sexual assault happens often, and college campuses, unfortunately, are no safe haven. Women walking back to their car at night from evening classes may have to cross the vast parking lot to reach their car. Parking lots are not always well lit and a long walk through an isolated area may induce feelings of fear. A simple solution could be to designate parking spots closer to campus buildings in well-lit areas for those with classes at night, and particularly for women.

3. Sex workers 

These individuals experience a number of vulnerabilities, and the trip home at night is often dreaded. However, exploitation can also occur during work hours. In these cases, it is important to draft up solutions so that protect women from workplace harassment. One barrier to action is the relationship between sex workers and law enforcement, as the lack of trust between the two prevents women's safety from being addressed. Labor laws might need to be altered to protect women in this line of work from harassment and exploitation, etc.

4. Women unaccompanied in the city 

At night, independence can become a problem. Often women are warned not to walk alone at night; nonetheless, they may want or need to conduct their activities on their own. Fear about safety in the city poses a severe restriction to women's mobility. Changes can be made to transit, by making it more frequent at night and extending its hours, while also improving signage to improve transit accessibility. Additionally, women-only taxi service or women-only train cars at night may reduce cases of harassment and increase feelings of security. Signs in transit targeted to all riders should raise awareness of issues toward women's safety and promote a culture of communal surveillance and protection. Also, lighting, neighborhood maps, building frontages with windows facing toward the sidewalk, and mixed use neighborhoods with services close to homes lie among the spectrum of interventions that can be made.

5. Women balancing home life and work life 

Balancing domestic duties such as taking care of children and earning wages can present a daunting task for women. There have been attempts, such as the Cuban Family Code, at creating equal division of labor in the household between partners so that women are not burdened. Nonetheless, enforcement has proven difficult.  Mixed use communities engender a supportive structure such as through close by services such as child care, grocery stores, and medical facilities, while also reducing the need to commute long ways to work by placing good jobs close to homes, and also enabling community surveillance so that women feel safe in both public and private spheres.

It is clear that gender-friendly cities will require cross-scalar solutions. Some, such as labor laws, can be made at the higher rungs by policymakers, while others can be dealt with at a DIY level from community advocates or through collaboration with planners and designers.

Read more on this topic: http://www.citylab.com/commute/2013/09/how-design-city-women/6739/

A Vancouver-based organization, Women Transforming Cities,
holds monthly cafe-style dialogues to draft solutions
for a report for the post-2015 UN Habitat- New Urban Agenda

The Role of Happiness and Social Sustainability in Improving Campus Planning

A college campus ought to accommodate the needs of students; after all, they are the reason for the institutions in the first place. Nonetheless, there are instances in which planning rejects the needs of many students. A student-run dialogue session called Lenses of Sustainability at my campus brought together university students to share their opinions on social sustainability, especially with regards to how our happiness shapes how our environment and vice versa. This reminded me of the role of participatory methods in improved campus planning. Students shared their opinions of how the social dimensions in their university experience were often neglected, and thus, left them feeling less fulfilled. This could be attributed to general characteristics of university life, which create stress for college students. Often, these are unpreventable aspects of large university life. However, a lot of the time, underlying students happiness was the configuration of campus built environment, especially with regards to affordable housing, public space, and social services. This can affect the wellbeing of students.

Students mentioned coziness as a contributor to their happiness. Thus, how public spaces and buildings are designed can reinforce this. Another was nature and the related recreational opportunities-- how can a campus retain enough green space? If we are to build more compactly, how can we ensure that nature is still accessible to promote social wellbeing? Another significant issue was being a part of a community. This is challenging in a large school, but it is an aspect that can be improved through improving accessibility to student housing, both permanent and temporary (even a student hostel).  Students who must commute for one or two hours each day to and from campus, not only feel separated from campus life, but when they are expected to juggle the various responsibilities of being a student and they lose much of their time commuting each day, it is unavoidable that they will be stressed. Affordable housing seemed to be the most significant strategy for students' quality of life to be improved. It also says a lot for a campus very much focused on environmental but not social sustainability-- these two are deeply intertwined.