Feminist Cities are Cities for Everyone

Two women sitting in a public space enjoying coffee together. Photographed by Sharee Hochman in Vancouver, British Columbia.

When you think of feminism, you may think of pay equality, reproductive rights, and sexual liberation. What you may not think of are curb-cuts, bike lanes, and planters.

While feminism is defined as “the advocacy of women’s rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes”, it is also closely linked to the human-made, urban environment. It is in cities that we can identify how gender inequalities were historically cemented in and how these built environments continue to perpetuate the patriarchal systems of today.

Most Canadian cities have been designed by men, built by men, and made for men, excluding everyone who has been rendered “other”. More specifically, designs considered a universal “every-person”, and because the majority (if not all) of planners, architects, and politicians at the time of Canada’s development were men, this default “person” tended to skew male. The “every man” was a 30 something, able-bodied, 6ft tall, family man who lived in the suburbs and drove to his job downtown.

Designing for men has constrained, inconvenienced, and endangered women, girls, and femmes of all ages and abilities. These inequalities have manifested in areas of infrastructure, mobility, and placemaking, with issues related to access, safety, health, resilience, and security.

Let’s dive into this, shall we?

Infrastructure:

Infrastructure relates to the fundamental facilities and systems needed for people to live in a society, such as sidewalks, roads, buildings, sewage, bridges, and so on. Decades of infrastructure being built by men, for men, has manifested in the form of expansive gray concrete, hostile streets, and lifeless parking lots.

I’ll begin with sidewalks, which are fundamental to safe, independent mobility and sense of community. Despite the vital role they play, most sidewalks are narrow, steep, and unmaintained. They are so narrow that two people with strollers are unable to walk side by side, a person in a wheelchair cannot navigate around a fire hydrant, and it is impossible for people to maintain the recommended 2 metres of physical distance to respect public health guidelines. They can be so steep at crosswalks, that people with wheelchairs and mobility aids will sometimes require assistance to get onto the sidewalk, causing distress and a lack of independence. They are often unmaintained, especially in winter, that they are a significant injury hazard or entirely unpassable for anyone with mobility challenges.

Group of four people demonstrating the lack o adequate space on a downtown sidewalk during the “Save our Sidewalk” action. Photographed by Nicole Roach in Winnipeg, Manitoba in September 2019.

As for streets, they once served as a place of mingling, with people moving around by walking, biking, riding horses, street cars, and a few slow moving automobiles. As personal automobiles continued to advance, they became faster and faster. The powerful auto-lobby effectively removed all of the other means of transport from the street, making it only possible for people to cross at “crosswalks” and introducing the term “jay-walking”. As described by Chris and Melissa Bruntlett in ‘Curbing Traffic’, “with no clear policies in place, the people at the top of city management took up the task to plan, build, and manage these new urban environments. They were almost exclusively - as you can probably guess - exclusively men” (pg. 74). Personal vehicles have continued to get larger and faster, also serving as a powerful status symbol of wealth and power for men - just think who is behind pretty much all of those revving engines - and dominating the public domain of streets. These public spaces are now almost entirely car-centric, fast-moving, and dangerous. This has lead to additional negative impacts, such as traffic violence, air pollution, infrastructure costs, noise pollution, and a lack of social connectivity.

When you build streets centered around personal vehicles, you need somewhere to put them - ah yes, parking. Vehicles in cities are often stored on the street (sometimes even for FREE!), in surface lots, or in parking garages. No matter where vehicles are being stored, they are taking up valuable real estate in cities that could be used for people, but create spaces that are just plain lifeless. Not only are these spaces lifeless, but also dangerous from both a traffic and women’s safety perspective. Parking lots or garages rarely have sidewalks running through them, making pedestrians highly vulnerable to vehicles pulling in and out of spaces and around tight corners. This is a similar issue with on-street parking, causing blind spots and distracted drivers looking for free parking. As for women’s safety, most parking lots or garages have little to no lighting, are isolated from other people, and there are plenty of dark corners for attackers to hide in.

Mobility:

The dominance of personal vehicles has permeated through Canadian cities from coast to coast, being seen as the “standard” mode of transportation with few viable alternatives. You can compare the expansiveness, connectivity, and maintenance of Canadian highways with transit or cycling networks, and it makes the priorities of governments pretty clear.

Building such an expansive network of roads and highways saw the bulldozing of communities - mostly of BIPOC and low-income people - and the paving over of wetlands and other vital aspects of our ecosystems. These highway networks are designed to accommodate the “average man” driving from the suburbs to work and back home five days a week. The aim is to make this commute as easy as possible, keeping the suburban dream alive! The problem is, when too many people are living this dream, the traffic becomes a nightmare and not even more lanes will wake us up.

If people do not want to drive or cannot afford that option, they often turn to transit. The majority of transit users in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) happen to be women (57.8%), with similar trends across Canada. Despite more transit users being women, public transit is mostly scheduled around the “peak times'' associated with the morning and afternoon commute. This makes any other trips by public transit, such as getting groceries, picking up a child, or visiting an elderly relative, unreliable and incredibly inconvenient. While the schedules are frustrating, many other areas of Canada are not even serviced by commuter rail or inter-city buses, with Greyhound Canada shutting down all bus service in May of 2021. This lack of public transit options disproportionately harms women, particularly Indigenous women fleeing domestic abuse and other circumstances. Another challenge is regarding transit fares - possibly an example of the pink tax? - with some tickets only allowing one transfer within a set time period. This makes trip-chaining, a common practice amongst women that is defined as “a series of movements between successive destination choices over some period of time”, challenging and costly. Then when you consider taking the bus with kids, or waiting for a bus that never shows in the cold, or getting sexually harrassed at a bus stop - it is no surprise that the bus is seen as a last-resort option for those who have options.

Another mobility option, especially for trips under 5 kms, is the humble bicycle. It is a fun, healthy, and easy way to get from A to B - or at least, it should be. In most Canadian cities, cycling requires mixing with vehicles, which puts slow, soft bodies in harm's way of fast, hard steel machines. For many people, especially women, this is too intimidating to even attempt. For many others, a few close calls, threatening honks, or even life-altering collisions has made cycling too dangerous to continue on. This is largely due to a lack of separated and/or protected infrastructure networks in cities, which are essential for people to feel comfortable using their bikes for transportation. According to 2017 Stats Canada data, males were more likely than females to have cycled in the past year (46% versus 34%), regardless of age, income, or education. Women also experience unique challenges, with sexual assault and harassment, being followed, experiencing sexism in bike shops, being unable to safely ride with children, and the list goes on. As explained by a Canada Bikes Literature Summary, “when a country isn’t bike friendly, women are the first to be left behind”.

Bike parking in front of hostile 6-lane through-fare with no cycling infrastructure. Photographed by Nicole Roach in Winnipeg, Manitoba in September 2019.

Placemaking:

As outlined above, cities have largely been designed to move fast through them, rather than being designed for people to slow down, relax, and connect with others. This fast-paced, hostile, and exclusive design is demonstrated by the lack of things that make places worth lingering.

For example, a lack of seating. Seating is often privatized, requiring people to buy food or a drink to sit down. Seating is also scarce, requiring people to go to a park or a bus stop that is often out of their way. Seating can be unsafe, if it is too close to fast-moving traffic, in too enclosed or secluded of a location, or even lacking shade. Seating has also continued to become anti-homeless, demonstrated by the rise of hostile architecture, which may include putting dividers in benches or providing individual seats so that a person could not lay down to rest. This hostility harms the most vulnerable as well as everyone else, including a mother needing to breastfeed, an elderly person needing to take a break, friends wanting to sit down to talk, and so on.

Two metal chairs set apart. Photographed by Nicole Roach in Maastricht, the Netherlands in April 2021.

Similar challenges are seen with washrooms, with heavy privatization and hostility to those seeking shelter or safe consumption. This is especially harmful to women who need to use the washroom more frequently than men and people who menstruate that require sanitary products and water. Women also need more time to use the washroom, compared to men. Some factors include, biological reasons, like needing to sit and/or cultural reasons, like needing more time to remove clothing. Women are also often the ones who care for family members that require additional help in the washroom.

These issues extend to the lack of play spaces for children, greenery, and public art - all things that are essential in activating public spaces. Instead, kids are shoved into lonely and private backyards (if they are lucky enough to have them), stunting their social development and well-being. The lack of greenery, trees, plants, and public produce increases the urban heat island effect and limits climate resilience to floods and heat waves, all of which disproportionately impacts women. An absence of public art is the absence of heart, stories, and community, which are all key aspects to making women feel safe in public and making places worth spending time in.

Now that we have covered what cities built by and for men look like, it is clear that changes need to be made. The great thing about cities is that they can be transformed! Traffic lanes can be removed, parking lots can be reclaimed, street lights can be implemented, public bathrooms can be opened, and so much more. Cities can be transformed by and for women, making them better places for everyone.

A Feminist City:

A feminist city will look different in every context, but the common threads are that they prioritize society’s most vulnerable and consider everyone in the design. When I say everyone, this also includes men. As expressed by bell hooks (1981), “to be ‘feminist’ in any authentic sense of the term is to want for all people, female and male, liberation from sexist role patterns, domination, and oppression”. That all sounds nice, right?

It doesn’t mean a braless utopia with abortion clinics on every street corner (actually, maybe it could), but cities that are equitable, enjoyable, and sustainable for all.

The feminist cities we are working towards include people-first infrastructure, with wide, well-maintained sidewalks, slow and safe streets, and better-utilized public spaces. We want to see transportation options that allow people to travel safely, conveniently, and with dignity, while also being aligned with climate science and smart economics (smart like a doughnut and strong towns). We also want to experience places that are beautiful and lively, where all kinds of people will want to gather and participate in their communities.

We’re not asking too much, just trying to dismantle the patriarchy one curb-cut, bike lane, and planter at a time.

What does a feminist city look like to you? Let’s build it together.